self, as she began to undo the
saddle girth.

"Stay here, then," said the sheep-herder, watching her with glistening
eyes. "I'll kill him for both of us! Where is his camp?"

"I don't know," she replied, shuddering.

The demented shepherd's way of speaking of taking a human life, even
though a worthless one, or a vicious one, was eager and hungry. He
licked his lips like a dog.

"You said he was camped on the river. Where?"

"I don't know," she returned again.

"I'll tell you," said he, staying her hand as she tugged on a strap.
"Both of us will go! You shall ride, and I'll run beside you. But"--he
bent over, grinding his teeth and growling between them--"you sha'n't
help kill him! That's for me, alone!"

She drew back from his proposal with a sudden realization of what a
desperately brutal thing this unstrung creature was about to do,
with a terrible arraignment of self-reproach because she had made no
effort to dissuade him or place an obstacle in the way of accomplishing
his design. It was not strange, thought she, with a revulsion of
self-loathing, that he accepted her as a willing accomplice and
proposed that she bear a hand. Even her effort to ride and find Boyle
had been half-hearted. She might have gone, she told herself, before
the herder arrived.

"No, no! I couldn't go! I couldn't!" she cried, forgetting that she was
facing an unbalanced man, all the force of pleading in her voice.

"No, you want to kill him yourself!" he charged savagely. "Give me that
horse--give it to me, I tell you! I'll go alone!"

He sprang into the saddle, not waiting to adjust the stirrups to his
long legs. With his knees pushed up like a jockey's, he rode off, the
pointer of chance, or the cunning of his own inscrutable brain,
directing him the way Boyle had gone the evening before.

His going left her nerveless and weak. She sat and watched him out of
sight beyond the cottonwoods and willows, thinking what a terrible thing
it was to ride out with the cold intention of killing a man. This man
was irresponsible; the strength of his desire for revenge had
overwhelmed his reason. The law would excuse him of murder, for in the
dimness of his own mind there was no conception of crime.

But what excuse could there be for one who sat down in deliberation----

Base Jerry Boyle might be, ready to sacrifice unfeelingly the innocent
for his own pleasure and gain, ready to strike at their dearest hopes,
ready to trample under his