“What have I to do with that? Why shouldn’t he write to my mother? Who has a better right?”
“Don’t drive me too far. By God! if I go away alone I’ll never leave you here to run off with Whispering Smith––remember that!” She sat in silence. His rage left her perfectly quiet, and her unmoved expression shamed and in part silenced him. “Don’t drive me too far,” he muttered sullenly. “If you do you will be responsible, Marion.”
She did not move her eyes from the blue hills 255 on the horizon. “I expect you to kill me sometime; I feel sure you will. And that you may do.” Then she bent her look on him. “You may do it now if you want to.”
His face turned heavy with rage. “Marion,” he cried, with an oath, “do you know how close you are to death at this moment?”
“You may do it now.”
He clinched the bench-rail and rose slowly to his feet. Marion sat motionless in the hickory chair; the sun was shining in her face and her hands were folded in her lap. Dicksie rocked on the porch. In the shadow of the house the man was mending the saddle.