eply disturbed
over the shooting.

"I reckon you wouldn't believe me, no matter how hard I talked," he said.
"You'd have your own opinion. It sure does look bad for me--havin' to
plug two guys in one season. An' I don't blame you for feelin' like you
do about it. But I've got this to say," he went on earnestly. "Kelso come
to the outfit, lookin' for trouble. I'd had a run-in with him a few years
ago. An' I shot him--in the arm. I thought it was all over. But along
comes Kelso, with his mustache shaved off so's I wouldn't know him--which
I did. He asked me for a job, an' I give it to him--hopin'. But hopes--"

"If you knew him, why did you give him a job?" she interrupted. "It might
have saved you shooting him."

"If he was wantin' to force trouble he'd have done it sooner or later,
ma'am."

"Well?" she said, interested in spite of herself.

"He waited two weeks for a chance. I didn't give him any chance. An'
then, one night, after Red Owen had been cuttin' up some monkey shines,
he talked fresh an' pulled his gun. He was a regular gunfighter, ma'am;
he'd been hired to put me out of business."

There was an appeal in his eyes that did not show in his voice; and it
would be all the appeal that he would make. Looking fixedly at him, she
became certain of that.

"Do you know who hired him?"

There was that in her tone which told him that he might now make his case
strong--might even convince her, and thus be restored to that grace from
which he, plainly, had fallen. But he was a claimant for her hand, he had
told her that he would not press that claim until she broke her
engagement with Masten, and if he now told her that it had been the
Easterner who had hired Kelso to kill him, he would have felt that she
would think he had taken advantage of the situation, selfishly. And he
preferred to take his chance, slender though it seemed to be.

"He didn't tell me."

"Then you only suspected it?"

He was silent for an instant. Then: "A man told me he was hired."

"Who told you?"

"I ain't mentionin', ma'am." He could not tell her that Blair had told
him, after he had told Blair not to mention it.

She smiled with cold incredulity, and he knew his chance had gone.

But he was not prepared for her next words. In her horror for his deed,
she had ceased to respect him; she had ceased to believe him; his earnest
protestations of innocence of wantonness she thought were hypocritical--an
impression strengthened by his