"Belle, why do you talk of such a thing? You won't give me up, because I won't let you. I won't go, Belle, that's settled."
Her only answer was to cling to him passionately. After a long silence, during which the ponies dropped to a walk, she said half questioningly:
"Jim, we can't—give up all and—and—separate now."
"Belle darling," and Jim suddenly became calm and clear in thought, and a strange new sense of power came on him as he gripped himself, "there are times when a man must just take the bit in his teeth and break through everything, and I'm going to do that now. There's just one way out of this; we're half-way to Deadwood. Let's go right on and get married. The college and everything else can go to the divil so long as I can be with you.
"Will you agree to that?" he asked, lifting her head from his shoulder and looking into her eyes.
"Jim," she said, pushing him gently away from her and leaning back so that they occupied the sides of the wide seat, "let's be fair with each other. For a long time you've had your fling at the hardship of going back to Coulter while I have urged you to go. This is my fling at it"—she smiled at him through her tears—"my rebellion, so perhaps we're quits. But the problem still remains. I thought about it all last night and I decided I could not let you go—that it meant the end of our hopes. When you first asked me, up the road, I doubted my right to tell you the fears I had. But, oh, Jim, it is our happiness, ours, not yours or mine alone. If we have that we can make the rest come right. If we lose that——"
"But we're not going to lose it," he cried, "if you'll only answer my question, Will you marry me to-day if we go on to Deadwood?" He put out his arms to her and she yielded with a happy sob to his ardour. Holding her and pressing his lips to hers, he said simply: "I am very happy."
After a little while she took his head between her palms and looking into his face with eyes that sought his spirit, as though she would pledge her faith to his, she said: "You will never be sorry for this, darling."
At Lookout Mountain was the half-way house. They fed their horses, rested an hour, and then sped on. At four o'clock they reached Deadwood. Jim put up the horses at the little inn, whose parlour he remembered; together they went to the jeweller's shop, purchased a ring, and then to the mayor's office.