I don’t know how I did it, only that, after a fight and being half smothered, I found myself crawling up the side of the Gulch, ever so low down, and dragging Jael into a safe place with her bairn.
She fell down afore me, hugged my legs, and kissed my feet; and then she started up and began staring up and down, ending by seeing, just above us, old Hez clinging there still, with his sound arm rammed into the bush, and his body swept out by the fierce stream.
The next moment she had seized me by the arm, and was pynting at him, and she gave a wild kind of shriek.
“He’s a gone coon, my gal,” I says, though she couldn’t hear me; and I was gloating over her beautiful white face and soft, clear neck, as I thought that now she was mine—all mine. I’d saved her out of the flood, and there was no Hez to stand in our way.
“Save him!—save him!” she shrieked in my ear.
What, Hez? Save Hez, to come between us once more? Save her husband—the man I hated, and would gladly see die? Oh, I couldn’t do it; and my looks showed it, she reading me like a book the while. No, he might drown—he was drowned—must be. No: just then he moved. But, nonsense! I wasn’t going to risk my life for his, and cut my own throat like, as to the futur’.
She went down on her knees to me though, pointing again at where Hez still floated; and the old feeling of love for her was stronger on me than ever.
“You’re asking me to die for you, Jael!” I shouted in her ear.
“Save him—save Hez!” she shrieked.
“Yes, save him!” I groaned to myself. “Bring him back to the happiness that might be mine. But she loves him—she loves him; and I must.”