"Thet's ther fashion ter talk, gal. I likes ter see a woman thet kin toss her head like a fractious filly. I hain't got no manner of use fer tame folks."
He came close and stood devouring her with the passion of his lecherous eyes, and Dorothy knew that her long effort to play a part had reached its climax.
He reached out his hands and for the second time he laid them upon her, but now he did not seek to sweep her into an embrace. He merely let his fingers rest, unsteady with hot feeling, on her shoulders as he said, "Why kain't we quit foolin' along with each other, gal? He hain't nuver comin' back ter ye no more."
But at that Dorothy jerked herself away and her over-wrought control snapped.
"What does ye mean?" she demanded, breathlessly. A sudden fear possessed her that fatal news had reached him before it had come to her. "Hes anything happened ter him?"
Instantly she realized what she had done, but it was useless to go on acting after the self-betrayal of that moment's agitation, and even Rowlett's self-complacent egotism read the whole truth of its meaning. He read it and knew with a fullness of conviction that through the whole episode she had been leading him on as a hunter decoys game and that her slow and grudging conversion was no conversion at all.
"Nothin' hain't happened ter him yit, so fur's I knows," he said, slowly. "But ye doomed him ter death when ye flared up like thet, an' proved ter me thet ye'd jest been lyin'."
Dorothy gave back to the wall and one hand groped with outstretched fingers against the smoothly squared logs, while the other ripped open the buttons of her waist and closed on the knife hilt that was always concealed there.
Her voice came low and in a dead and monotonous level and her face was ghost pale.
"Yes, I lied ter ye ter keep ye from goin' over thar an' murderin' him. I knowed ther way ye fights—I hain't nuver feared ye on my own account but I did fear ye fer him ther same es a rattlesnake thet lays cyled in ther grass."