He seemed on the point of rising. She stretched out a beseeching hand and laid it on his arm.
"Jake, I--I want to tell you something. Will you listen to me? Please, will you listen to me?"
His arm grew tense as a stretched wire under her touch. She thought there was a glitter of hardness in the red-brown eyes as he said, "There is no call for you to tell me anything unless you wish."
She sat up slowly, compelling herself to face him, "But I want you to--understand," she said.
He laid his hand abruptly upon hers with a gesture that almost seemed as if he would restrain her. "You needn't fret any about that," he said. "Reckon I--do understand."
The vital force of the man was in that free grip of his. She looked to see the awful flare of savage passion leap back into his eyes. But she looked in vain. His eyes baffled her. They seemed to hold her back like a sword in the hand of a practised fencer.
The words she had thought to utter died upon her lips. There was to be no reckoning then. And yet she could not feel reassured. He did not look like a man who would forego his revenge.
"What--what are you going to do?" she faltered at last.
"I shouldn't want to know too much if I were you," said Jake, softly drawling. "Not at this stage anyway."
His hand still held hers. He looked her hard and straight in the face, and she was conscious of something fiery, something elementary, wholly uncivilized, behind his look. There was a suggestion of violence about him. She saw him as a man tracking his enemy through an endless wilderness, breasting mighty rivers, hewing his way through pathless forests, conquering every obstacle with fixed determination, mercilessly riding him down.