"I know it now," she said, wearily.
"Go home and hang your gun up, and let it stay there. As long as I'm here I'll do the fighting when there's any to be done."
"You didn't help me a little while ago. All you did was for her."
"It was for both of you," he said, rather indignant that she should take such an unjust view of his interference.
"You didn't ride in front of her and stop her from shooting me!"
"I came to you first—you saw that."
Lambert mounted, turned his horse to go back and mend the fence. She rode after him, impulsively.
"I'm going to stop fighting, I'm going to take my gun off and put it away," she said.
He thought she never had appeared so handsome as at that moment, a soft light in her eyes, the harshness of strain and anger gone out of her face. He offered her his hand, the only expression of his appreciation for her generous decision that came to him in the gratefulness of the moment. She took it as if to seal a compact between them.
"You've come back to be a woman again," he said, hardly realizing how strange his words might seem to her, expressing the one thought that came to the front.