see? After they had killed you. It would be the worse
for both of us. What can you do, with one arm, and a revolver, and an
unlucky woman? No, Mr. Beeson (she was firm and strangely formal); the
cards are faced up. I have closed a good bargain for both of us. When you
are out, you need say nothing. Perhaps some day I may be ransomed, should
I wish to be. But we can talk no further now. He is impatient. The
money--you will need the money, and I shall not. Please turn your back and
I'll get at my belt. Why," she laughed, "how well everything is coming.
You are disposed of, I am disposed of----"

"Money!" I roared. "God in Heaven! You disposed of? I disposed of? And my
honor, madam! What of that?"

"And what of mine, Mr. Beeson?" She stamped her foot, coloring. "Will you
turn your back, or----? Oh, we've talked too long. But the belt you shall
have. Here----" She fumbled within her gown. "And now, adios and good
luck. You shall not despise me."

The chief was advancing accompanied by a warrior. Behind him his men
waited expectant, gathered as an ugly blotch upon the dun desert. Her
honor? The word had double meaning. Should she sacrifice the one honor in
this crude essay to maintain the other which she had not lost, to my now
opened eyes? I could not deliver her tender body over to that painted
swaggerer--any more than I could have delivered it over to Daniel himself.
At last I knew, I knew. History had written me a fool, and a cad, but it
should not write me a dastard. We were together, and together we should
always be, come weal or woe, life or death.

The money belt had been dropped at my feet. She had turned--I leaped
before her, thrust her to rear, answered the hail of the pausing chief.

"No!" I squalled. And I added for emphasis: "You go to hell."

He understood. The phrase might have been familiar English to him. I saw
him stiffen in his saddle; he called loudly, and raised his rifle,
threatening; with a gasp--a choked "Good-bye"--she darted by me, running
on for the open and for him. She and he filled all my landscape. In a
stark blinding rage of fear, chagrin, rancorous jealousy, I leveled
revolver and pulled trigger, but not at her, though even that was not
beyond me in the crisis.

The bullet thwacked smartly; the chief uttered a terrible cry, his rifle
was tossed high, he bowed, swayed downward, his comrade grabbed him, and
they were racing back closely side by side and she was running back to me
and t