ve y'u lost your nerve?" he demanded.

"My God! Colter--cain't y'u see?" she implored. "Won't y'u take me
away?"

"I shore will--presently," he replied, grimly. "But y'u'll wait till
I've shot the lights out of this Isbel."

"No!" she cried. "Take me away now.... An' I'll give in--I'll be what
y'u--want.... Y'u can do with me--as y'u like."

Colter's lofty frame leaped as if at the release of bursting blood.
With a lunge he cleared the threshold to loom over her.

"Am I out of my haid, or are y'u?" he asked, in low, hoarse voice. His
darkly corded face expressed extremest amaze.

"Jim, I mean it," she whispered, edging an inch nearer him, her white
face uplifted, her dark eyes unreadable in their eloquence and mystery.
"I've no friend but y'u. I'll be--yours.... I'm lost.... What does it
matter? If y'u want me--take me NOW--before I kill myself."

"Ellen Jorth, there's somethin' wrong aboot y'u," he responded. "Did
y'u tell the truth--when y'u denied ever bein' a sweetheart of Simm
Bruce?"

"Yes, I told y'u the truth."

"Ahuh! An' how do y'u account for layin' me out with every dirty name
y'u could give tongue to?"

"Oh, it was temper. I wanted to be let alone."

"Temper! Wal, I reckon y'u've got one," he retorted, grimly. "An' I'm
not shore y'u're not crazy or lyin'. An hour ago I couldn't touch y'u."

"Y'u may now--if y'u promise to take me away--at once. This place has
got on my nerves. I couldn't sleep heah with that Isbel hidin' around.
Could y'u?"

"Wal, I reckon I'd not sleep very deep."

"Then let us go."

He shook his lean, eagle-like head in slow, doubtful vehemence, and his
piercing gaze studied her distrustfully. Yet all the while there was
manifest in his strung frame an almost irrepressible violence, held in
abeyance to his will.

"That aboot your bein' so good?" he inquired, with a return of the
mocking drawl.

"Never mind what's past," she flashed, with passion dark as his. "I've
made my offer."

"Shore there's a lie aboot y'u somewhere," he muttered, thickly.

"Man, could I do more?" she demanded, in scorn.

"No. But it's a lie," he returned. "Y'u'll get me to take y'u away
an' then fool me--run off--God knows what. Women are all liars."

Manifestly he could not believe in her strange transformation. Memory
of her wild and passionate denunciation of him and his kind must have
seared even his calloused soul. But the ruthless nature of him had not
weakened nor