His fear passed as his wrath had passed. His head drooped, his glance wavered. “Shoot!” he commanded, sullenly. “I’d sooner die than live—now.”
His words, his tone, brought back to her a vision of the man he had seemed when she first met and admired him. Her hand fell, the woman in her reasserted itself. A wave of weakness, of indecision, of passionate grief overwhelmed her. “Oh, Cliff!” she moaned. “Why did you do it? He was so gentle and sweet.”
He did not answer. His glance wandered to his horse, serenely cropping the grass in utter disregard of this tumultuous human drama; but the wind, less insensate than the brute, swept through the grove of dwarfed, distorted pines with a desolate, sympathetic moan which filled the man’s heart with a new and exalted sorrow. “You’re right,” he said. “I was crazy. I deserve killing.”
But Berrie was now too deep in her own desolation to care what he said or did. She kissed the cold lips of the still youth, murmuring passionately: “I don’t care to live without you—I shall go with you!”
Belden’s hand was on her wrist before she could raise her weapon. “Don’t, for God’s sake, don’t do that! He may not be dead.”
She responded but dully to the suggestion. “No, no. He’s gone. His breath is gone.”
“Maybe not. Let me see.”
Again she bent to the quiet face on which the sunlight fell with mocking splendor. It seemed all a dream till she felt once more the stain of his blood upon her hands. It was all so incredibly sudden. Only just now he was exulting over the warmth and beauty of the day—and now—
How beautiful he was. He seemed asleep. The conies crying from their runways suddenly took on poignant pathos. They appeared to be grieving with her; but the eagles spoke of revenge.
A sharp cry, a note of joy sprang from her lips. “He is alive! I saw his eyelids quiver—quick! Bring some water.”