“You said he was camped on the river. Where?”
“I don’t know,” she returned again.
“I’ll tell you,” said he, staying her hand as she tugged on a strap. “Both of us will go! You shall ride, and I’ll run beside you. But”–he bent over, grinding his teeth and growling between them–“you sha’n’t help kill him! That’s for me, alone!”
She drew back from his proposal with a sudden realization of what a desperately brutal thing this unstrung creature was about to do, with a terrible arraignment of self-reproach because she had made no effort to dissuade him or place an obstacle in the way of accomplishing his design. It was not strange, thought she, with a revulsion of self-loathing, that he accepted her as a willing accomplice and proposed that she bear a hand. Even her effort to ride and find Boyle had been half-hearted. She might have gone, she told herself, before the herder arrived. 245
“No, no! I couldn’t go! I couldn’t!” she cried, forgetting that she was facing an unbalanced man, all the force of pleading in her voice.
“No, you want to kill him yourself!” he charged savagely. “Give me that horse–give it to me, I tell you! I’ll go alone!”
He sprang into the saddle, not waiting to adjust the stirrups to his long legs. With his knees pushed up like a jockey’s, he rode off, the pointer of chance, or the cunning of his own inscrutable brain, directing him the way Boyle had gone the evening before.
His going left her nerveless and weak. She sat and watched him out of sight beyond the cottonwoods and willows, thinking what a terrible thing it was to ride out with the cold intention of killing a man. This man was irresponsible; the strength of his desire for revenge had overwhelmed his reason. The law would excuse him of murder, for in the dimness of his own mind there was no conception of crime.
But what excuse could there be for one who sat down in deliberation––
Base Jerry Boyle might be, ready to sacrifice unfeelingly the innocent for his own pleasure and gain, ready to strike at their dearest hopes, ready to trample under his feet the green gardens of their hearts’ desire; yet, who should sit in judgment on him, or seek a justification in his deeds to–to–– Even then she could not bring her thoughts to express it, although her wild heart had sung over it less than twenty-four hours before. 246