"You are Reverdy's friend, aren't you, and he is yours. Well, I
promise you. But it isn't necessary, for it would have to be something
that I could believe you capable of. Then Reverdy would have to believe
it, and then I might have a mind of my own after all. Why, how could
anyone say anything about you? You have been as good to Zoe as if she
were as white as I."
And so Dorothy didn't know. I left the matter where it was. I could not
go on. You see I was nineteen and Dorothy was eighteen and the year was
1834.
But Lamborn. I had made an enemy of him. Rather, he had turned himself
into my enemy. He was running with a gang of rough fellows called the
McCall boys. They drank and fought, using clubs or stones or knives.
They were suspected of trying to rob the stage when it was driven by the
poor wretch who had died of the cholera two summers before. That driver
was noted for his courage, his ready use of the rifle; and he had
frightened the marauders off, and had wounded one of them, who limped
away until the trail of his blood was obscured.
Every time I came into town I was subjected to wolfish leers from some
member of this gang. Evidently they had taken up Lamborn's cause.
Something was preying upon him. He was drinking more heavily. Perhaps he
was tormented with the thought that I knew his secret and abided some
vengeance upon him.
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