"Did he say you could stay?"
"Well," she hesitated an instant, "he said he didn't want me doing any work in town; he said he wouldn't stand for it."
"No, you mustn't do any work here." Gibbs spoke now with his own authority, reinforcing that of the detective.
"Oh, sin not leery!" she sneered at him. "I'm covered all right, and strong. You're missing the number, that's all. I'm going to camp here, and when I see her, I'll clout her on the kurb; I'll slam a rod to her nut, if I croak for it!"
"Jane," said Gibbs, when he had looked his stupefaction at her, "you've certainly gone off your nut. Who in hell's this woman you're talking about?"
"As if you don't know! What do you want to string me for?"
Gibbs looked at her with a perfectly blank face.
"All right, have it your way."
"Well," she said presently, with some doubt in her mind, "if you don't know and just to prove to you that I _do_ know, it's the sister of that young Koerner!"
Gibbs looked at her a long time in a kind of silent contempt. Then he said in a tone that dismissed the subject as an absurdity:
"You've passed; the nut college for you."
Jane fingered the metal snake that made the handle of her bag; now and then she sighed, and after a while she was forced to speak--the silence oppressed her:
"Well, I'll stay and see, anyway."
"Jane, you're bug house," said Gibbs quietly.
Somehow, at the words, she bowed her head on her hands and wept; the black ribbon on her hat shook with her sobbing.
"Oh, Dan, I am bug house," she sobbed; "that's what I've been leery of.
I haven't slept for a month; I've laid awake night after night; for four days now I've been going down the line--hunting her everywhere, and I can't find her!"
She gave way utterly and cried. And Gibbs waited with a certain aspect of stolid patience, but in reality with a distrust of himself; he was a sentimental man, who was moved by any suffering that revealed itself to him concretely, or any grief or hardship that lay before his own eyes, though he lacked the cultured imagination that could reveal the sorrows and the suffering that are hidden in the world beyond immediate vision.
But she ceased her weeping as suddenly as she had begun it.
"Dan," she said, looking up, "you don't know what I've done for that man. I was getting along all right when I doubled with him; I was doing well--copping the cush right along. I was working under protection in Chi.; I gave it all up for him--"
She broke off suddenly and exclaimed irrelevantly:
"The tommy buster!"
Gibbs started.
"No," he protested, "not Curly!"
"Sure!" she sneered, turning away in disgust of his doubt.
"What made you stand for it?"
"Well," she temporized, forced to be just, "it was only once. I had rousted a goose for his poke--all alone too--" She spoke with the pride she had always had in her dexterity, and Gibbs suddenly recalled the fact that she had been the first person in all their traditions who could take a pocketbook from a man, "weed" and replace it without his being aware; the remembrance pleased him and his eyes lighted up.
"What's the matter?" she demanded suddenly.
"I was thinking of the time you turned the old trick, and at the come-back, when the bulls found the sucker's leather on him with the put-back, they booted him down the street; remember?"
Jane looked modest and smiled, but she was too full of her troubles now for compliments, though she had a woman's love for them.
"I saw the sucker was fanning and I--well, Curly comes up just then and he goes off his nut and he--gives me a beating--in the street."
She saw that the circumstances altered the case in Gibbs's eyes, and she rather repented having told.
"He said he didn't want me working; he said he could support me."
Gibbs plainly thought well of Curly's wish to be the sole head and support of his nomadic family, but he recognized certain disadvantages in Curly's attitude when he said:
"You could get more than he could."
"Course, that's what I told him, but he said no, he wouldn't let me, and, Dan, you know what I did? Why, I helped him; he used to bust tags on the rattlers, and he hoisted express-wagons--I knew where to dispose of the stuff--furs and that sort, and we did do pretty well. I used to fill out for him, and then I'd go with him to the plant at night and wait with the drag holding the horses--God! I've sat out in the jungle when it was freezing, sat out for hours; sometimes the plant had been sprung by the bulls or the hoosiers; it made no difference--that's how I spent my nights for two winters. I know every road and every field and every fence corner around that town. It gave me the rheumatism, and I hurt my back helping him load the swag. You see he didn't have a gager and didn't have to bit up with any one, but he never appreciated that!
And now he's lammed, he's pigged, that's what he's done; he's thrown me down--but you bet I'll have my hunk!"
"That won't get you anything," Gibbs argued. "Anyway," he added, as if he had suddenly discovered a solution, "why don't you go back on the gun now?"
She was silent a moment, and, as she sat there, the tears that were constantly filling her eyes welled up again, and she said, though reluctantly and with a kind of self-consciousness:
"I don't want to, Dan. I'm getting old. To tell the truth, since I've been out of it, I'm sick of the business--I--I've got a notion to square it."
Gibbs was so used to this talk of reform that it passed him idly by, and he only laughed. She leaned her cheek against her hand; with the other hand she twisted and untwisted the metal snake. Presently she sighed unconsciously.
"What are you going to do now?" Gibbs asked presently.
"I'm going to stay here in town till I see this woman."
"But you can't do any work here."
"I don't want to do any work, I tell you."
"How'll you live?"
"Live!" she said scornfully. "I don't care how; I don't care if I have to carry the banner--I'll get a bowl of sky-blue once in a while--and I'll wash dishes--anything!" She struck the table, and Gibbs's eyes fastened on her white, plump little fist as it lay there; then he laughed, thinking of it in a dish-pan, where it had never been.
"Well, I'll do it!" she persisted, reading his thought and hastily withdrawing the fist. "I'm going to get him!" She looked at Gibbs for emphasis.
"Jane," he said quietly, "you want to cut that out. This is no place for you now--this town's getting on the bum; they've put it to the bad.
It's time to rip it. This rapper--"
"Oh, yes, I've heard--what's this his name is now?"
"Eades."