“To-night.”
“Have you been to Calabasas and back to-night?”
“Everybody but Sassoon is in the chase,” she replied uneasily––as if not knowing what to say, or how to say it. “They said you should never leave the Gap alive––they are ready with traps everywhere. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bear––after what––you did for me to-night––to think of your being shot down like a dog, when you were only trying to get away.”
“I wouldn’t have had you take a ride like that for forty belts!”
“McAlpin showed it to me the last time I was at the stage barn, hanging where you left it.” He strapped the cartridges around him.
“You should never have taken that ride for it. But since you have––” He had drawn his revolver from his waistband. He broke it now and held it out. “Load it for me, Nan.”
“What do you mean?”
“Put four more cartridges in it yourself. Except for your cartridge, the gun is empty. When you do that you will know none of them ever will be used against your own except to protect my life. And if you have any among them whose 213 life ought to come ahead of mine––name him, or them, now. Do as I tell you––load the gun.”
He took hold of her hands and, in spite of her refusals, made her do his will. He guided her hand to draw the cartridges, one after another, from his belt, and waited for her to slip them in the darkness into the empty cylinder, to close the breech, and hand the gun back.
“Now, Nan,” he said, “you know me. You may yet have doubts––they will all die. You will hear many stories about me––but you will say: ‘I put the cartridges in his revolver with my own hands, and I know he won’t abuse the means of defense I gave him myself.’ There can never be any real doubts or misunderstandings between us again, Nan, if you’ll forgive me for making a fool of myself when I met you at Tenison’s. I didn’t dream you were desperate about the way your uncle was playing; I pieced it all together afterward.” He waited for her to speak, but she remained silent.