"Clotildy, believe me fur wunst. I jes' kem ter see you uns, honey-sweet. I pined so fur the sight o' ye—the sound o' yer voice. I resked all—the sher'ff, the jail, the man's kin—all, ter kem ter view ye, as all mought—but me—hid out in the wilderness. Believe me fur wunst, sweetheart. I only said it bekase I love ye so."
She hesitated, he thought, in a relenting mood. She came close to him and laid her hand on his ragged coat sleeve. She gazed up into his eyes under the drooping hat brim.
"I will—I will believe you uns," she said, "ef ye will do one thing."
He looked a keen, eager inquiry.
"Take that loaded shootin' iron outn' yer boot leg, an' leave it hyar with me," she hissed between her set teeth.
It was little the demonstration of a languishing, love-sick girl, seeking to protect her lover's safety against his own impulsive imprudence. But her histrionic intuitions, great as they were, had yet their hampering limitations. She was a presentation, rather, of some warlike feminine spirit, a Bellona, who, having conquered in a hard fight, inexorably dictates the sacrifices of the capitulation.
For a moment, so taken by surprise he was, he could find no words for answer. Then he broke out with oaths so crowding on his tongue that his utterance was for a time but an inarticulate mouthing of profanity.
Still close beside him she eyed him threateningly. "I hed hoped never ter lay my tongue ter sech a word," she declared, her eyelids narrowing. "But ef ye won't abide by my proof I'll believe the wust o' ye. I'll b'lieve ye threatened him in dead earnest. An' I'll gin the word who ye air to the sher'ff afore that star draps a-hint the rim o' the mountings." She lifted her eyes to the lucent splendours of the evening star, just slipping from a roseate haze to the tips of the firs darkly cut and finial-like against the clear horizon. Then once more she gazed sternly at him.
He cast one furtive glance up and down the vacant road. Then he stooped and drew a long glittering weapon from the leg of his shapeless boot, pulled high over his baggy trousers. But he did not place it in the hand she held out eagerly. His eyes blazed with a light far more dangerous than the stern, steady, menacing gleam of hers, for it was the intemperate rage of a jealous lover, of a desperate gamester, losing all on the turn of the dice, of a duped and overreached schemer. He had hardly space for a step before him, to be taken of his own free will; he was driven, hounded, pursued, brought to bay.
"I'd be justified ter shoot ye dead, hyar in the road, Clotildy, an' before Gawd, I'll do it," she heard him gasp.