“Cap’n Ackert,” she trembled forth. There was so much significance in her tone that, standing at her side, he looked up in sudden expectation. “I tole ye the truth whenst I say I seen no guide”—he made a gesture of impatience; he had no time for twice-told tales—“kase—kase the guide war—war—myself.”
The clear twilight fell full on his amazed, upturned face and the storm of fury it concentrated.
“What did you do it fur?” he thundered, “you limb o’ perdition!”
“Jes’ ter help him some. He—he—he—would hev been capshured.”
He would indeed! The guerilla was very terrible to look upon as his brow corrugated, and his upturned eyes, with the light of the sky within them, flashed ominously.
“You little she-devil!” he cried, and then speech seemed to fail him.
She had begun to shiver and shed tears and emit little gusts of quaking sobs.
“Oh, I be so feared——” she whimpered.
“But—but—you mustn’t hang—nobody else on s’picion!”
There was a vague change in the expression of his face. He still stood beside the saddle, with the reins over his arm, while the horse threw his head almost to the ground and again tossed it aloft in his impatient weariness of the delay.