Black Jack, page 128 by Max Brand
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e with us--"
"You see," said Terry firmly, "I plan to do the work you asked me to do-- kill what you wanted killed on the range. And when I've worked off the money I owe you--"
Before he could complete his sentence, a door opened on the far side of the room, and Kate Pollard entered again. She had risen from her bed in some haste to answer the summons of her father. Her bright hair poured across her shoulders, a heavy, greenish-blue dressing gown was drawn about her and held close with one hand at her breast. She came slowly toward them. And she seemed to Terry to have changed. There was less of the masculine about her than there had been earlier in the evening. Her walk was slow, her eyes were wide as though she had no idea what might await her, and the light glinted white on the untanned portion of her throat, and on her arm where the loose sleeve of the dressing gown fell back from it.
"Kate," said her father, "I had to get you up to tell you the big news-- biggest news you ever heard of! Girl, who've I always told you was the greatest gent that ever come into my life?"
"Jack Hollis--Black Jack," she said, without hesitation. "According to your way of thinking, Dad!"
Plainly her own conclusions might be very different.
"According to anybody's way of thinking, as long as they was thinking right. And d'you know who we've got here with us now? Could you guess it in a thousand years? Why, the kid that come tonight. Black Jack as sure as if he was a picture out of a book, and me a blind fool that didn't know him. Kate, here's the second Black Jack. Terry Hollis. Give him your hand agin and say you're glad to have him for his dad's sake and for his own! Kate, he's done a man's job already. It's him that dropped old foxy Minter!"
The last of these words faded out of the hearing of Terry. He felt the lowered eyes of the girl rise and fall gravely on his face, and her glance rested there a long moment with a new and solemn questioning. Then her hand went slowly