that he
could look right down into her face and watch the effect of his words.
He was brimful of a merciless project, which was to be carried out
partly for her edification, partly for his own revenge, and wholly for
the satisfaction of the devilish nature within him, which now, let
fully loose, swayed him beyond any thought of consequences.

"See here, you've been my Jonah right along. I never had a cent's
worth of luck since I got scratching around your fence," he began,
almost quietly. Only was the threat in his eyes. "I don't guess I can
say just how things happened--I mean how things got going wrong
with me, unless it was you. I'm going to tell you straight when it
happened. I got mean when I was fool enough to guess I was sweet
on you. Jim Thorpe was sweet on you too. I got mean toward him. We
shot a target for first chance to ask you to marry. He won. I got in
ahead, and, like a fool, married you. That was the beginning. An' I
didn't feel any less mean after. Yes, you were my Jonah, sure. I
couldn't work those first days 'cos of you, an' after I didn't guess
I wanted to. But it set me savage I didn't want to. Well, I'm not
here to tell you all the things that followed. You know them as
well as me. But there's things you don't know. After you got hurt
that night it was Peter Blunt who drove me out of Barnriff with
threats of kicking me out, and setting the townsfolk on me for the way
I'd treated you. But Jim was behind it. He didn't do the talkin'
to me--Peter did that. But Jim came in that night to see you. I
found that out. Say, I was mad. I was mad at Jim Thorpe, and not
Peter, for I read his doing in my own way. Y'see I was still a fool,
an' still sweet on you. But I saw how I could get back on him. I'd
been at work some time on the cattle-duffing, an' I saw just how I
could hurt him too.

"Say, cattle-duffing's a great gambol, an' I don't regret it. I'm
going to keep on at it--only elsewhere. Well, I got hold of Master
Jim's brand. I got kit as like he wears as two cents, in case I was
located. We're alike in figure----"

"But, thank God, there's no other resemblance."

Eve's scathing comment came with startling suddenness. Her terror was
passing, and only she felt a great loathing for this man.

"Keep all that till I've finished," Will said coolly. "Maybe you won't
be so ready then. Well, I used his brand, and set a bunch of cattle
running amongst his--McLagan's cattle, as you know. Then I waited for