"Give me that iron, Mr. Morgan!" she demanded in voice that trembled from the surge of her perturbed breast.
Morgan stood confronting her in the fierce pose of a man prepared to contend to the last extreme with any who had come to stay his hand in his hour of requital. The glowing iron, from which little wavers of heat rose in the sun, he grasped in one hand; in the other his pistol, elbow close to his side, threatening the quarter from which interference had come. Still he demurred at her demand, refusing the outstretched hand.
"Give it to me!" she said again, drawing nearer, but a little space between them now, so near he fancied her breath, panting from her open lips, on his cheek.
Silent, grim, still clouded by the vapors of his passion, Morgan stood denying her, not able to adjust himself in wrench so sudden to the calm plane of his normal life.
"Not for their sake—for your own!" she pleaded, her hand gentle on his arm.
The set muscles of his pistol arm relaxed, the muzzle of the weapon dropped slowly with the surge of dark passion in his breast.
"They deserve it, and worse, but not from you, Mr. Morgan. Leave them to the law—give me that iron."
Morgan yielded it into her hand, slowly slipped his pistol back into the holster, slowly raised his hand to his forehead, pushed back his hat, swept his hand across his eyes like one waking from an oppressive dream. He looked around at the silent people, hundreds of them, it seemed to him, for the first time fully conscious of the spectacular drama he had been playing before their astonished eyes.
The Dutchman had struggled to his knees, where he leaned with neck outstretched as if he waited the stroke of the headsman's sword, unable to regain his feet. The girl looked with serious eyes into Morgan's face, the hot branding iron in her hand.
"I think you'd better lock them up in jail, Mr. Morgan," she said.