“You lie!” insisted the Girl, beside herself with rage.
“I don’t—”
“You do!”
“I admit that every circumstance points to—”
“Stop! Don’t you give me any more o’ that Webster Unabridged. You git to cases. If you didn’t come here to steal you came to The Polka to rob it, didn’t you?”
Johnson, his eyes lowered, was forced to admit that such were his intentions, adding swiftly:
“But when I knew about you—” He broke off and took a step towards her.
“Wait! Wait! Wait where you are! Don’t you take a step further or I’ll—” She made a significant gesture towards her bosom, and then, laughing harshly, went on denouncingly: “A road agent! A road agent! Well, ain’t it my luck! Wouldn’t anybody know to look at me that a gentleman wouldn’t fall my way! A road agent! A road agent!” And again she laughed bitterly before going on: “But now you can git—git, you thief, you imposer on a decent woman! I ought to have tol’ ’em all, but I wa’n’t goin’ to be the joke o’ the world with you behind the curtains an’ me eatin’ charlotte rusks an’ lemming turnovers an’ a-polkyin’ with a road agent! But now you can git—git, do you hear me?”
Johnson heard her to the end with bowed head; and so scathing had been her denunciations of his actions that the fact that pride alone kept her from breaking down completely escaped his notice. With his eyes still downcast he said in painful fragments:
“One word only—only a word and I’m not going to say anything in defence of myself. For it’s all true—everything is true except that I would have stolen from you. I am called Ramerrez; I have robbed; I am a road agent—an outlaw by profession. Yes, I’m all that—and my father was that before me. I was brought up, educated, thrived on thieves’ money, I suppose, but until six months ago when my father died, I did not know it. I lived much in Monterey—I lived there as a gentleman. When we met that day I wasn’t the thing I am to-day. I only learned the truth when my father died and left me with a rancho and a band of thieves—nothing else—nothing for us all, and I—but what’s the good of going into it—the circumstances. You wouldn’t understand if I did. I was my father’s son; I have no excuse; I guess, perhaps, it was in me—in the blood. Anyhow, I took to the road, and I didn’t mind it much after the first time. But I drew the line at killing—I wouldn’t have that. That’s the man that I am, the blackguard that I am. But—” here he raised his eyes and said with a voice that was charged with feeling—“I swear to you that from the moment I kissed you to-night I meant to change, I meant to—”