“If I thought you would”–he hesitated, searching her face with his fevered eyes, in which red veins showed as in the eyes of an angry dog–“I’d have to sacrifice you!”
Agnes felt that she never could draw her weapon in time, in case the eccentric tried to take it away again, and her heart quailed as she measured the distance she would have to ride before the fall of the ground would protect her, even if she should manage to break his hold on the bridle, and gallop off while he was fetching his pistol from the wagon.
“I’ll not warn him,” said she, placing her hand on his arm. “I give you my sincere word that I’ll do nothing to save him from what I feel to be your just vengeance.”
“Go, before I doubt you again!” he cried, slapping her horse with his palm as he let go the bridle.
From the tip of the hill she looked back. He had disappeared–into the wagon, she supposed; and she made haste to swerve from the straight course to put another hill between them, in case he might run after her, his mad mind again aflame with the belief that she would cheat him of his revenge.
Agnes arrived in camp full of tremors and contradictory emotions. One minute she felt that she should ride and warn Boyle, guilty as he might be, and deserving of whatever punishment the hand of the wronged man might be able to inflict; the next she relieved herself 242 of this impulse by arguing that the insane sheep-herder was plainly the instrument of fate–she lacked the temerity, after the first flush, to credit it to Providence–lifted up to throw his troubles between her and her own.
She sat in the sun before her tent thinking it over, for and against, cooling considerably and coming to a saner judgment of the situation. Every little while she looked toward the hills, to see if the shepherd had followed her. She had seen no horse in the man’s camp; he could not possibly make it on foot, under two hours, even if he came at all, she told herself.
Perhaps it was an imaginary grievance, based upon the reputation which Boyle had earned for himself; maybe the poor, declaiming philosopher had forgotten all about it by now, and had returned to his discourses and his argument. She brewed a pot of tea, for the shadows were marking noonday, and began to consider riding down the river to find Boyle and tell him of the man’s threat, leaving him to follow his own judgment in the matter. His conscience would tell him whether to stand or fly.
Strong as her resentment was against the man who had come into her plans so unexpectedly and thrown them in a tangle, she felt that it would be wrong to her own honesty to conceal from him the knowledge of his danger. Perhaps there remained manliness enough in him to cause him to withdraw his avaricious scheme to oust Dr. Slavens in return for a service like that. 243 She determined at last to seek Boyle in his camp.
She brought up her horse and saddled it, took a look around camp to see that everything was in shape–for she liked to leave things tidy, in case some of the neighbors should stop in–and was about to mount, when a man’s head and shoulders appeared from behind her own cottonwood log. A glance showed her that it was the sheep-herder. His head was bare, his wild hair in his eyes.