mplice of the real
criminal.

Her thoughts harked back to the beginning of the story as she knew it,
reverting to that night when she had first seen Buck Thornton at Poke
Drury's road house. From that she passed in review all that she knew of
him; how he had come in while she was talking with the banker about the
errand which was to carry her over a lonely trail to her uncle. At first
she had been quick to suspect that Thornton had overheard a part of
their conversation, that he had known from the first that she was
carrying the five thousand dollars. Now she realized with a little
twinge of bitter self-accusation that she had been over hasty in judging
the man who had been kind to her.

She remembered how, on the trail from Dry Town, she had seen a man
following her, a man whose face, at the distance he maintained, was
hidden from her by his flapping hat brim, but whom she believed to be
Thornton. Upon what had she founded her belief? Upon the matter of his
being of about the size and form of the cowboy, upon the fact that he
rode a sorrel horse and that his clothes, even to the grey neck
handkerchief, were the same! How easy, how simple a matter for another
man to have a sorrel horse and to wear clothes like Thornton's!

She remembered that the cowboy's surprise had seemed sincere and lively
when she had told him she had seen him; she recalled his courtesy to her
in the Harte cabin, his willingness to walk seven miles carrying his
heavy saddle that she might have a night's rest under a roof with
another woman. Not to be forgotten was the wrath in his eye and voice
when she had come upon him with his limping horse, and now, at last she
knew why his horse had been lamed and by whom! For that seemingly wanton
cruelty had accomplished that which it was planned to do, making her
certain beyond a doubt that Thornton had lied to her, that he had been
the man whom she had seen following her, hence that he it was who had
robbed her and had kissed her into the bargain.

Now, in an altered mood she cast in review all that John Smith and his
wife had told her of him, and she knew that her first judgment there in
the storm-smitten road house, when she had deemed him clean and honest
and manly, had been the right judgment; that he was a man and a
gentleman; that he could be all that his eyes told of him, gentle unto
tenderness or as hard as tempered steel but always ... a man.

But there was so much which she did not grasp yet