“Yes,” said he, looking at his hands, “I’ve turned over a leaf. I have thrown away my guns. Never while I live will I put them on again, either here or in the North. I am no longer a hired killer. From where the sun stands now I am done with that. I am McMasters, citizen, not officer.”
He had found his bridle reins, but did not go, could not go.
“You were talking about forgiveness,” said he, at length, with difficulty. “Forgive you? Why, I have never done anything but that! Of course, since I am going away, I ought to forget you; but I never shall. All you have to do about me is to forget me. There are better men.”
The girl flared out at him with some sudden impulse which got beyond her control.
“You come here to preach to me? Is that the way to do? Oh, you ride into my place and you make me tear out my heart with shame and humiliation and show it to you. And then you ride away again and say good-by and tell me to forget! Why did you come here at all? Couldn’t you have mailed back my draft?”
He hesitated. His hand dropped to his side. Suddenly he held out to her a little object which so, by accident, he had touched; something which had been in the side pocket of his coat. In appearance it was a fragment of dark red rock, broken irregularly. But Taisie’s eyes noticed that to it clung another object—a horse-shoe steel, such as the riders of the outlands were used to carry with a bit of flint so they might be safe for fire in any exigency. Without plan, these two objects now served Dan McMasters for the thing which he had not been able to put into speech.
“Anastasie,” said he, “look at this! It’s nothing—only a bit of ore I picked up near the Wichitas when I came through. But see, it’s magnetic. Look how steel clings to it! You hardly can draw them apart; it will pull to it every little piece of metal. It can’t help itself; they can’t help themselves.
“Taisie, what’s inside of it? I don’t know. What is that force that we can’t see? I don’t know. I don’t know anything. You ask me questions that I can’t answer. All I know is that the magnet and the steel come together—here, you see. And yet you ask me why am I here now? I don’t know. It’s the same reason that made me leave Rudabaugh alive in his camp and ride after you.
“Didn’t I tell you there are things we can’t weigh or measure? There’s something behind the world we can’t any of us find out! Why did I come? I don’t know.”
He tossed the little bit of rock and the clinging steel upon the ground beside the twisted fragment of Anastasie Lockhart’s draft, “In full to date.” His eyes were softened. The lines of chin and jaw seemed new to her.