"Thanks, Dicky!" said Peaches, her eyes filling as she covered his hand
with hers for an instant. "I know there isn't any reason to believe in
him--but I do, just the same."
"But there is a reason," said Dick unexpectedly. "Look here, Peaches, I
suppose I ought to have told you this when I first came back. But I
didn't first off, because I found you engaged to another man and
apparently happy. I didn't want to go raking over old wounds. So I
didn't even speak of him except to say that I'd heard he was killed in a
gallant action--and I never even said that much until you mentioned it
first--do you remember?"
"Yes," she nodded. "Go on, Dicky!"
"But I'd seen him while I was over there," he said. "I--well, it was
rather by accident but I happened to save his life. Oh, not the last
time! Up to to-night I thought he was dead, the same as you did. But
before that. It was the time I got the Italian medal----"
"So that was why you wouldn't talk about it!" I ejaculated. But neither
paid any attention to me.
"He asked a lot about you," Dicky went on. "And I told him all I could.
About the ranch, and what you and Miss Freedom were doing. He was just
crazy to hear. But he didn't want me to tell you about him. 'I'm not fit
for her, Dick,' he says to me. We was both getting over scalp wounds
then and used to sit out in front of the hut and talk a lot. 'I got out
of her life for her own good,' he says. 'And if it ever comes natural
tell her I didn't intend to kill the chap at the railway station--it was
in self-defense.' That's what he told me. And then he tried to give me a
ring he had, because of me having the luck to save him, see? But I
wouldn't take it. So he give me his address in case I ever needed
anything."
"His address?" said Peaches chokingly. "Why, Monteventi is his address,
surely?"
"Yeh--but he give me another one besides," said Dick. "Though, of
course, I heard after that he had gone West, and so I kind of forgot
about it."
"If he had another address it must have been where he could be reached
in an emergency!" cried Peaches. "Can't you remember it, Dicky? Oh,
think! Please try to remember it!"
"I guess maybe I got it on me," said he with a curious shyness.
"I--wrote it on the back of your picture. I--I carried it along through
the war. I might have it now, at that."
From the inside of his coat he took a thin wallet, through which he
pretended to search while we watched breathlessly. And there, as I had
anticipated, was the portrait of Alicia--Alicia at sixteen with her
heavy hair in braids over either shoulder and a Mexican sombrero shading
her laughing eyes. He turned it over and she gave a little cry as she
recognized her lover's name--followed by an address in Hoboken!
We exchanged a look of wonder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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