blood?”
“True—terribly true, I fear.”
“But what's he doing here in Cottonwoods? This place isn't notorious enough for such a man. Sterling and the villages north, where there's universal gun-packing and fights every day—where there are more men like him, it seems to me they would attract him most. We're only a wild, lonely border settlement. It's only recently that the rustlers have made killings here. Nor have there been saloons till lately, nor the drifting in of outcasts. Has not this gun-man some special mission here?”
Jane maintained silence.
“Tell me,” ordered Bishop Dyer, sharply.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Do you know what it is?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me that.”
“Bishop Dyer, I don't want to tell.”
He waved his hand in an imperative gesture of command. The red once more leaped to his face, and in his steel-blue eyes glinted a pin-point of curiosity.
“That first day,” whispered Jane, “Lassiter said he came here to find—Milly Erne's grave!”
With downcast eyes Jane watched the swift flow of the amber water. She saw it and tried to think of it, of the stones, of the ferns; but, like her body, her mind was in a leaden vise. Only the Bishop's voice could release her. Seemingly there was silence of longer duration than all her former life.
“For what—else?” When Bishop Dyer's voice did cleave the silence it was high, curiously shrill, and on the point of breaking. It released Jane's tongue, but she could not lift her eyes.
“To kill the man who persuaded Milly Erne to abandon her home and her husband—and her God!”
With wonderful distinctness Jane Withersteen heard her own clear voice. She heard the water murmur at her feet and flow on to the sea; she heard the rushing of all the waters in the world. They filled her ears with low, unreal murmurings—these sounds that deadened her brain and yet could not break the long and terrible silence. Then, from somewhere—from an immeasurable distance—came a slow, guarded, clinking, clanking step. Into her it shot electrifying life. It released the weight upon her numbed eyelids. Lifting her eyes she saw—ashen, shaken, stricken—not the Bishop but the man! And beyond him, from round the corner came that soft, silvery step. A long black boot with a gleaming spur swept into sight—and then Lassiter! Bishop Dyer did not see, did not hear: he stared at Jane in the throes of sudden revelation.
“Ah, I understand!” he cried, in hoarse accents. “That's why you made love to this Lassiter—to bind his hands!”
It was Jane's gaze riveted upon the rider that made Bishop Dyer turn. Then clear sight failed her. Dizzily, in a blur, she saw the Bishop's hand jerk to his hip. She saw gleam of blue and spout of red. In her ears burst a thundering report. The court floated in darkening circles around her, and she fell into utter blackness.
The darkness lightened, turned to slow-drifting haze, and lifted. Through a thin film of blue smoke she saw the rough-hewn timbers of the court roof. A cool, damp touch moved across her brow. She smelled powder, and it was that which galvanized her suspended thought. She moved, to see that she lay prone upon the stone flags with her head on Lassiter's knee, and he was bathing her brow with water from the stream. The same swift glance, shifting low, brought into range of her sight a smoking gun and splashes of blood.
“Ah-h!” she moaned, and was drifting, sinking again into darkness, when Lassiter's voice arrested her.
“It's all right, Jane. It's all right.”
“Did—you—kill—him?” she whispered.
“Who? That fat party who was here? No. I didn't kill him.”
“Oh!... Lassiter!”
“Say! It was queer for you to faint. I thought you were such a strong woman, not faintish like that. You're all right now—only some pale. I thought you'd never come to. But I'm awkward round women folks. I couldn't think of anythin'.”
“Lassiter!... the gun there!... the blood!”
“So that's troublin' you. I reckon it needn't. You see it was this way. I come round the house an' seen that fat party an' heard him talkin' loud. Then he seen me, an' very impolite goes straight for his gun. He oughtn't have tried to throw a gun on me—whatever his reason was. For that's meetin' me on my own grounds. I've seen runnin' molasses that was quicker 'n him. Now I didn't know who he was, visitor or friend or relation of yours, though I seen he was a Mormon all over, an' I couldn't get serious about shootin'. So I winged him—put a bullet through his arm as he was pullin' at his gun. An' he dropped the gun there, an' a little blood. I told him he'd introduced himself sufficient, an' to please move out of my vicinity. An' he went.”
Lassiter spoke with slow, cool, soothing voice, in which there was a hint of levity, and his touch, as he continued to bathe her brow, was gentle and steady. His impassive face, and the kind gray eyes, further stilled her agitation.
“He drew on you first, and you deliberately shot to cripple him—you wouldn't kill him—you—Lassiter?”
“That's about the size of it.”
Jane kissed his hand.
All that was calm and cool about Lassiter instantly vanished.
“Don't do that! I won't stand it! An' I don't care a damn who that fat party was.”
He helped Jane to her feet and to a chair. Then with the wet scarf he had used to bathe her face he wiped the blood from the stone flags and, picking up the gun, he threw it upon a couch. With that he began to pace the court, and his silver spurs jangled musically, and the great gun-sheaths softly brushed against his leather chaps.
“So—it's true—what I heard him say?” Lassiter asked, presently halting before her. “You made love to me—to bind my hands?”
“Yes,” confessed Jane. It took all her woman's courage to meet the gray storm of his glance.
“All these days that you've been so friendly an' like a pardner—all these evenin's that have been so bewilderin' to me—your beauty—an'—an' the way you looked an' came close to me—they were woman's tricks to bind my hands?”
“Yes.”
“An' your sweetness that seemed so natural, an' your throwin' little Fay an' me so much together—to make me love the child—all that was for the same reason?”
“Yes.”
Lassiter flung his arms—a strange gesture for him.
“Mebbe it wasn't much in your Mormon thinkin', for you to play that game. But to ring the child in—that was hellish!”
Jane's passionate, unheeding zeal began to loom darkly.
“Lassiter, whatever my intention in the beginning, Fay loves you dearly—and I—I've grown to—to like you.”
“That's
