He sat for a while, looking away, a clenched hand lying on his knee. Twice he drew in his breath to speak, and turned his head, without ever quite bringing his gaze around to hers. Suddenly he got up and went to the window. He stood there, plucking at the vine leaves. Her big black eyes followed him; they noted that bright hair—dusty now, sweat-darkened in streaks, yet such as a prince ought to have; they dwelt on the outlines of his tired figure, rimmed with its halo of light; gallant, victorious, yet in danger, needing her—she could read all that into it. He whirled abruptly and came toward her.
“Suppose they told you I’d killed a man,” he said.
There was an awful silence in the close little room. Hilda was as one who comes upon a dizzying abyss, horrible, chaotic, yawning to swallow both dream and reality. But she was made of heroic stuff. In spirit she approached the edge and looked down, wincing but resolute and clinging to the hand of her hero.
It was terrible; why, yes, to be sure it was terrible. But, oh, it had a gorgeous thrill to it! What was the use of hiding a fugitive and enduring “all” for his sake if he hadn’t committed some dreadful deed—several of them, for that matter? Richard Cœur de Lion slew men in heaps and piles; so did King Harold. Why, all the kings and princes did, and the splendid warriors, in those old times. Shorty knew fellows that had killed their man, and Buster and the others, too; and they said they were good boys just the same. More than once there had been a man at the Three Sorrows table, or sequestered in the Three Sorrows bunk house, about whom it had been an open secret that he was “on the dodge” because of a shooting scrape. If you came right down to it, Uncle Hank himself had lent the last one a horse and money. These considerations did not decide Hilda’s course. She was for her fugitive anyhow, right or wrong, and whatever or whoever might have been against him. But there was a certain pleasure in realizing her immediate public opinion to be with her. Aloud, she said:
“How—why—how did you know to come to me?”
He answered, curiously, with another question, coming slowly back and sitting down again:
“This is the Three Sorrows ranch, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I thought it was, but I didn’t dare to ride up and ask.” Then, after a moment’s pause, in which he studied her, “You must be Hilda Van Brunt.”
“I am Hilda.”