rd you're drawing; it's a gun. You may draw
laughing, if you wish to dissemble for a sudden drop; they do, when they
have iron in their heart and the bullet already on its way, in their mind.
I mustn't stay longer. Shall we go to the fire now? I am cold." She
shivered. "Daniel is waiting. And when you've delivered me safe you'd
better leave me, please."

"Why so?"

She smiled, looking me straight in the eyes.

"Quien sabe? To avoid a scene, perhaps; perhaps, to postpone. I have an
idea that it is better so. You've baited Daniel far enough for to-night."

We walked almost without speaking, to the Hyrum Adams fire. Daniel lifted
upper lip at me as we entered; his eyes never wandered from my face. I
marked his right hand quivering stiffly; and I disregarded him. For if I
had challenged him by so much as an overt glance he would have burst
bonds.

Rachael's eyes, the older woman's eyes, the eyes of all, men and women,
curious, admonitory, hostile and apprehensive, hot and cold
together--these I felt also amidst the dusk. I was distinctly unwelcome.
Accordingly I said a civil "Good-evening" to Hyrum (whose response out of
compressed lips was scarce more than a grunt) and raising my hat to My
Lady turned my back upon them, for my own bailiwick.

The other men were waiting en route.

"Didn't kill ye, did he?"

"No."

"Wall," said one, "if you can swing a rattler by the tail, all right. But
watch his haid."

Friend Jenks paced on with me to our fire.

"We were keepin' cases on you, and so was he. He saw that practice--damn,
how he did crane! She was givin' you pointers, eh?"

"Yes; she wanted amusement."

"It'll set Bonnie Bravo to thinkin'--it'll shorely set him to thinkin',"
Jenks chuckled, mouthing his pipe. "She's a smart one." He comfortably
rocked to and fro as we sat by the fire. "Hell! Wall, if you got to kill
him you got to kill him and do it proper. For if you don't kill him he'll
kill you; snuff you out like a--wall, you saw that can travel."

"I don't want to kill him," I pleaded. "Why should I?"

Jenks sat silent; and sitting silent I foresaw that kill Daniel I must. I
was being sucked into it, irrevocably willed by him, by her, by them all.
If I did not kill him in defense of myself I should kill him in defense of
her. Yet why I had to, I wondered; but when I had bought my ticket for
Benton I had started the sequence, to this result. Here I was. As she had
said, here I was, and here she was. I m