ed. She wished it in the name of her own
responsibility for all that had happened. Yet her tongue had no urging
word to offer. She waited in a supernatural and dreadful curiosity on
Jack's decision. It was as if he were to answer one more question in
explanation of the mystery of his nature. Could he deliberately shoot
down an unarmed man? Was he that hard?

"I am thinking just how to deal with you, Pete and Ropey," Jack
proceeded. "As I understand it, you have not been very useful citizens of
Little Rivers. You can live under one condition--that you leave town and
never return armed. Half a minute to decide!"

"I'll go!" said Pete.

"I'll go!" said Ropey.

"And keep your words?"

"Yes!" they assented.

But neither moved. The fact that Jack had not yet lowered his
revolver made them cautious. They were obviously over-anxious to play
safe to the last.

"Then go!" called Jack.

Pete and Ropey slouched away, leaving behind Ropey's gun, which was
unimportant as it had only one notch, and Pete's precious companion of
many campaigns with its six notches, lying on the sand.

"And, gentlemen," Jack called to the spectators, "our little
entertainment is over now. I am afraid that you will be late for
breakfast."

Apparently it came as a real inspiration to all at once that they might
be, for they began to withdraw with a celerity that was amazingly
spontaneous. Their heads disappeared below the skyline and only the
actors were left. Pete and Ropey--Bill Lang following--walked away along
the bed of the _arroyo_, instead of going over the bank. Pete paused when
he was out of range. The old threat was again in his pose.

"I'm not through with you, yet!" he called.

"Why, I hope you are!" Jack answered.

He let his revolver fall with a convulsion of weakness. Mary wondered if
he were going to faint. She wondered if she herself were not going to
faint, in a giddy second, while the red spot on the sand shaped itself in
revolving grotesquery. But the consciousness that she must not lift her
weight from the artery was a centering idea to keep her faculties in some
sort of equilibrium.

He was looking around at her, she knew. Now she must see his face after
this transformation in him which had made her fears of his competency
silly imaginings; after she had linked her name with his in an
overwhelming village sensation. She was stricken by unanalyzable emotions
and by a horror of her nearness to him, her contact with hi