Heah I've been waitin' for y'u to love me," he declared, with a
gesture not without dignified emotion. "Your givin' in without that
wasn't so much to me."

And at these words of the rustler's Jean Isbel felt an icy, sickening
shudder creep into his soul. He shut his eyes. The end of his dream
had been long in coming, but at last it had arrived. A mocking voice,
like a hollow wind, echoed through that region--that lonely and
ghost-like hall of his heart which had harbored faith.

She burst into speech, louder and sharper, the first words of which
Jean's strangely throbbing ears did not distinguish.

"-- -- you! ... I never gave in to y'u an' I never will."

"But, girl--I kissed y'u--hugged y'u--handled y'u--" he expostulated,
and the making of the cigarette ceased.

"Yes, y'u did--y'u brute--when I was so downhearted and weak I couldn't
lift my hand," she flashed.

"Ahuh! Y'u mean I couldn't do that now?"

"I should smile I do, Jim Colter!" she replied.

"Wal, mebbe--I'll see--presently," he went on, straining with words.
"But I'm shore curious.... Daggs, then--he was nothin' to y'u?"

"No more than y'u," she said, morbidly. "He used to run after me--long
ago, it seems..... I was only a girl then--innocent--an' I'd not known
any but rough men. I couldn't all the time--every day, every
hour--keep him at arm's length. Sometimes before I knew--I didn't
care. I was a child. A kiss meant nothing to me. But after I knew--"

Ellen dropped her head in brooding silence.

"Say, do y'u expect me to believe that?" he queried, with a derisive
leer.

"Bah! What do I care what y'u believe?" she cried, with lifting head.

"How aboot Simm Brace?"

"That coyote! ... He lied aboot me, Jim Colter. And any man half a man
would have known he lied."

"Wal, Simm always bragged aboot y'u bein' his girl," asserted Colter.
"An' he wasn't over--particular aboot details of your love-makin'."

Ellen gazed out of the door, over Colter's head, as if the forest out
there was a refuge. She evidently sensed more about the man than
appeared in his slow talk, in his slouching position. Her lips shut in
a firm line, as if to hide their trembling and to still her passionate
tongue. Jean, in his absorption, magnified his perceptions. Not yet
was Ellen Jorth afraid of this man, but she feared the situation.
Jean's heart was at bursting pitch. All within him seemed chaos--a
wreck of beliefs and convictions. Nothing was true.