e did. Ask Bob! He yelled it from a field, an' shot his pistol
in the air, and said he'd do it yet. Don't you reckon I knew this
country warn't big enough for him an' the school?"

Her cheeks burned hotter with this added humiliation that he had
intended, not chivalrously to defend her, but only to keep her for his
own advancement.

He had never let go her hand, nor stopped the anguished moving of his
body.

"I didn't want over much to kill him," he was again saying. "As I laid
there behind a log, watchin' him foolin' around, I almost wanted to
creep away. An' when he turned his back to go in the cabin, my finger'd
hardly pull the trigger--it reminded me so much of that time I laid my
sights on the back of old Bill Whitly's head--"

"What?" she screamed, springing back in a perfect agony of horror.
"What?"

He stared at her, amazed and even frightened by this new, this terribly
new, ring in her voice. She was raising her hands slowly to her throat,
and shrinking away--shrinking back against the wall as though he were
some loathsome thing upon which she had suddenly and unexpectedly come.

"What's the matter?" he cried, forgetting his own feelings in this new
alarm.

"Did--you--kill--Bill--Whitly?"

"Yes," he answered, not understanding. "Why?"

The room was sickeningly quiet, except for her breathing. He could have
almost sworn her eyes were crackling and snapping as they stared at him.

"Why?" she repeated. "Can you ask any one of my name in the mountains,
why?"

"I never thought," he whispered in a terrified voice, "you belonged to
_those_ Whitlys!" And as he looked more closely at her face the truth
slowly crept into his brain. Passionately his hands went out to her, as
he took a trembling step forward: "My Gawd, my Gawd, Miss Jane! Don't
tell me that I done _that_! Don't tell me it war _yoh_ Pappy!"

The telephone was on the wall of this room. Keeping the long table
between them, she crossed quickly and turned the little crank.
Recognizing the town operator's voice she frantically called:

"Miss Gregget, this is Jane Whitly!--well, never mind the name!--this is
Colonel May's house!" She was numb, and fearful of those passionate
hands which might any instant drag her from the instrument. "Tell the
sheriff to come quick!" she screamed. "Dale Dawson has killed Tusk
Potter!"

With this she sprang about, her back to the wall and at bay, to receive
the infuriated mountaineer's charge. But he had not move