ng, he held in one hand the loaded cartridge and in the other
the empty revolver.

"You think little of bloodshed, I know," she returned unpleasantly.

"I think a whole lot," he drawled in painful retort, "of fair
fighting."

"And I'm a woman--you do well to taunt me with that."

"I did not taunt you with it. You are hatefully unjust," he protested
sullenly.

"You've asked me to go--I'm going. How much of what you tell me is
true, I don't know. But I can believe my own eyes, and I believe you
are not in condition to do much injury, even if you came here with
that intention. You will certainly lose your life if you move from
your hiding-place."

She started away. He leaned toward her. "Stop," he said peremptorily,
raising himself with a wrenching effort. Something in the stern eye
held her. His extended hand pointed toward her as arbitrarily as if,
instead of lying helpless at her feet, he could command her to his
bidding. "I want to ask you a question. I've told you the truth. I
have just one cartridge. If you are going to send your cousin and his
men here, it's only fair I should know it now--isn't it?"

Her face was hard in spite of the weakness he struggled to conceal. It
annoyed her to think he had surmised she was revolving in her mind
what to do. He was demanding an answer she had not yet given to
herself.

"My cousin is wounded," she said, pausing. And then with indecision:
"If you stay here quietly you are not likely to be molested."

She stepped down from the ledge as noiselessly as she had come. Shaken
by the discovery she had so unexpectedly made, Nan retreated almost
precipitately from the spot. And the question of what to do worried
her as much as it worried de Spain. The whole range had been shaken by
the Calabasas fight. Even in a country where appeal to arms was
common, where men were ready to snuff out a life for a word, or kill
for a mess of pottage--to settle for the least grave offense a dispute
with a shot--the story of the surprising, unequal, and fatal encounter
of the Calabasas men with de Spain, and of his complete disappearance
after withstanding almost unheard-of odds, was more than a three days'
wonder; nothing else was talked of for weeks. Even the men in Morgan's
Gap, supposed to be past masters of the game played in the closed room
at Calabasas, had been stunned by the issue of the few minutes with
Jeffries's new man.

Nan, who had heard but one side of the story, pictured the