e any foolishness. Now quietly. Who's
gone to kill--who?"

His manner had its effect. Eve choked back her rising emotion with an
effort, and her eyes lost some of their straining.

"It's Will," she said, with a sort of deliberate measuring of her
words. "He's gone to kill Elia. Out there, back at the bluff. It's for
setting the men after him. And--then, and then he's coming back----"

Jim was staggered. He looked at the woman wondering if she had
suddenly lost her senses.

"And I came back to tell you he'd got clear away. By Heaven! And he
did this?" He indicated the bonds he had just removed, and his eyes
darkened with sudden fury.

The woman nodded. She was holding herself with all her might.

"Yes, but--that's nothing." Suddenly she let herself go. All the old
terror surged uppermost again. "But don't wait! Jim, save him for my
sake! Save him for me! Oh, my poor, helpless brother! Jim--Jim, you
are the only one I can look to. Oh, save him! He's all I have--all I
have."

It was a dreadful moment for the man. The woman he loved half dead
with terror and the cruel handling dealt her by her husband. Now she
was appealing to him as the only man in the world she could appeal to.
His love rushed to his head and came near to driving him to the one
thing in the world he knew he must not do. He longed to crush her in
his strong arms, and proclaim his right to protect her against the
world. He loved her so that he wanted to defy everybody, all the
world, that he might claim her for his own. But she was not his. And
he almost spoke the words aloud to convince himself and drive back the
demon surging through his blood.

"Where did you say he was?" he demanded, almost savagely in his
tremendous self-repression.

"At the bluff, out back. Hurry, hurry, for--God's sake!"

That was better. The less personal appeal helped him to calm himself.

"How long's he been gone?" he asked, turning his eyes from her
terror-stricken face to help himself regain his own control.

"About a quarter of an hour, or even a half," she cried.

"It's a quarter of a mile, isn't it?"

"More. Nearly a mile."

"Right. You stay here." He threw a pistol on the table. "Keep that to
protect yourself," he added, brusquely. "And--Eve, if I get there in
time, I'll save your brother. If I don't, your husband shall die, as
sure as----"

But his sentence remained unfinished. He rushed out of the house and
sought his horse. The animal was still grazin