Left alone, like a man sitting, shaken and demoralized, upon the broken débris of a wrecked universe, Turner stared ahead with a dull incredulity. But inaction was foreign to his nature and after a while he rose unsteadily to his feet. He turned and started at a swift stride which broke presently into a dog-trot along the way Henderson had taken; then he hesitated, halted and wheeled in his tracks.
"No!" he exclaimed. "No, by God, ef I meets up with him the way I feels now, I'll kill him afore he has ther chanst ter speak with me. I kain't govern myself. I aims ter let her tell hit to me her own self!"
So he altered his direction and went plunging westward.
A short route through broken rock and tangled brush enabled him to cut ahead of Blossom's course so that, turning an abrupt angle in the trail, the girl found him standing before her with clenched hands and a face so set and pale that she started back. It seemed to her that, instead of himself, it was his ghost which confronted her.
With a slow and stifled outcry, at the apparition, she carried her hands to her face, then broke into convulsive sobs.
"I didn't aim ter eavesdrop, Blossom," said Turner, his sternness wavering before her tears. "But I seed ye givin' yore lips ter Jerry Henderson back thar. Hit seems ter me like I kin almost discern the stain of thet kiss soilin' em now. I reckon I ought rightfully ter hev speech with him fust—but I knowed I'd kill him ef I did—an' so I held my hand twell I'd done seed you."
They were both trembling, and the girl's hands came slowly away from a face pitifully agitated. Her voice was a whisper.
"Ye mustn't censure me, Turney," she huskily protested. "I'm plighted—ter him."
"Plighted!" The word broke from the man as explosively as an oath, then after a moment's silence she heard him saying, in a slow and stunned fashion: "I 'lowed thet ye war all but plighted to me."
"I knows—I knows, Turney," she pleaded desperately. "I wants thet ye should understand. I thought thet I loved ye—I do love ye better then ef ye war my own blood brother—but I didn't know afore now ther kind of love thet—thet——"