“Like a serpent she crawled across his path.”
“You did! Waal, I must have took you for a ghost.”
“The red fiends of murder were in her heart. She was seeking her husband—who turned her out to die, and—”
“The infernal brute!”
“She found him far up in the hills. The sharp knife was in her hand—her arm was raised—”
“But you could not strike him?”
“She had loved him once.”
“Thank God for that!” In the hour of strife, when the hot blood was rioting through the heart, the frontiersman could well and willingly fight his way; but to murder a sleeping man in cold, calculating blood, was a thought that made him, iron-nerved as he was, shudder and grow faint.
“The poor wife he had spurned from his wigwam—the bride of but little more than one small moon—kissed him as he slept, and then turned away forever.”
“That was right—the varmint.”