"An' Miss Jane'll go?" he asked, hopefully.
"Certainly not," Brent flushed.
"I'll see what she says," Dale dubiously suggested.
"You'll do nothing of the sort! Would you have her know about this mess?"
"It seems like she's pretty apt to know," he answered.
There was cruel truth in this; she was pretty apt to know beyond a doubt; and Brent pictured what it would mean to a girl who believed and had such implicit trust in one to find him a willful murderer. He thought a moment of the blind sister, the helpless one of patient waiting, of prayerful days; all dark, all dark, except for the hopeful coming of that day when her brother should stand irreproachable before the world and hear the applause of men. Slowly he spoke; it was of the second plan, formed in a white hot crucible of passion as Jane had walked away from him that morning.
"Several times Tusk has threatened to kill me if I persisted in building the road across his patch of land. He stopped me one night on the pike and laid hold of my bridle rein, and I had to get down and punch his head. Why shouldn't he have tried to fix me early this morning when I might have been up in that country?—and why shouldn't I have shot him in self-defense?"
"I reckon you could," the mountaineer doggedly answered.
"Well, prod up your brains, man, or I'll begin to doubt if you're as scintillating us everybody says! Don't you see what has to be done if the sheriff gets wind of the thing and comes here? If I can probably get off, and you'll probably be hanged—what's the answer?"
"You don't mean—" Dale swung about, resurrected hope lighting his face; but Brent held up a warning hand.