he himself
would have been hard put to it to tell whether that sigh held more of
regret, or of relief.

CHAPTER XIV

While her grandfather was still on the porch, and her sister was out
of the house, Plutina possessed herself of the new revolver, with its
holster, which, after slipping down her gown from the shoulder, she
attached under the left arm-pit. The looseness of the ill-fitting
garment concealed the weapon effectually enough. For ready access, the
upper buttons to the throat were left unfastened, in seeming relief
against the heat of midday. Thus equipped, the girl stole out through
the back way, unobserved by her relations, to keep tryst with the
desperado.

As she followed a blind trail that shortened the distance between the
Siddon cabin and the Holloman Gate to a short two miles, Plutina was
torturing a brain already overtaxed in the effort to devise some means
whereby she might wreck the projects of the villain, without at the
same time bringing ruin on herself, or those she loved. Always,
however, her thoughts went spinning toward the same vortex of
destruction. She could, indeed, contrive nothing better than the
policy of cajolery on which she had first determined, and to this
course, as it seemed to her, she must cling, though her good sense was
well advised of its futility. She knew that a scoundrel of Hodges
unrestrained passions could not long be held from his infamous
purposes by any art of hers. At the best, she might hope perhaps to
delay the catastrophe only by hours. In her discouraged state, she
admitted that it would be quite impossible to restrain him until the
law should come to her aid. She was determined none the less to employ
every resource at her command, in order to postpone decisive action.
One thing was at once her chief reliance and her chief source of fear:
the outlaw's passion for her. In his brutal fashion, the man loved
her. That fact gave her power over him, even while it exposed her to
the worst peril at his hands.

The presence of the revolver comforted her mightily. From time to
time, she moved her right hand stealthily across her bosom, to
reassure a failing courage by feeling the stiff leather of the holster
under the gown. She was experienced in the use of weapons. Her rifle
had often contributed to the cabin larder. Muscles that knew no tremor
and a just eye had given her a skill in marksmanship much beyond the
average, even in this region where firearms we