The chief was advancing accompanied by a warrior. Behind him his men waited expectant, gathered as an ugly blotch upon the dun desert. Her honor? The word had double meaning. Should she sacrifice the one honor in this crude essay to maintain the other which she had not lost, to my now opened eyes? I could not deliver her tender body over to that painted swaggerer—any more than I could have delivered it over to Daniel himself. At last I knew, I knew. History had written me a fool, and a cad, but it should not write me a dastard. We were together, and together we should always be, come weal or woe, life or death.
The money belt had been dropped at my feet. She had turned—I leaped before her, thrust her to rear, answered the hail of the pausing chief.
“No!” I squalled. And I added for emphasis: “You go to hell.”
He understood. The phrase might have been familiar English to him. I saw him stiffen in his saddle; he called loudly, and raised his rifle, threatening; with a gasp—a choked “Good-bye”—she darted by me, running on for the open and for him. She and he filled all my landscape. In a stark blinding rage of fear, chagrin, rancorous jealousy, I leveled revolver 285 and pulled trigger, but not at her, though even that was not beyond me in the crisis.
The bullet thwacked smartly; the chief uttered a terrible cry, his rifle was tossed high, he bowed, swayed downward, his comrade grabbed him, and they were racing back closely side by side and she was running back to me and the warriors were shrieking and brandishing their weapons and bullets spatted the rocks—all this while yet my hand shook to the recoil of the revolver and the smoke was still wafting from the poised muzzle.
What had I done? But done it was.