He stepped even closer.
"That's why you've got to keep away from me! You can't handle him alone. You can't come to my ranch to handle him because of me. Nobody else will take him in around here. It's me or nobody. It's my way or th' old way he's been goin' until he comes to th' end.
"I promise you this. I'll watch over him an' care for him an' guard him in every way. I'll put the best I've got into bringin' him back.... An' all th' time I'll be wishin'—prayin', if I could—that a thunderbolt 'uld strike him dead! He ain't fit for you, ma'am! He's no more fit for you than ... than ...
"Hell, ma'am, there's no use talkin'! He's your husband, you've said you loved him, that's enough. But if he, if he wasn't your husband, if he ..."
He jerked open the front of his shirt, reached in and drew out his flat, blue automatic pistol.
She started back with a cry.
"Don't you be afraid of me," he cried fiercely, grasping her wrist. "Don't you ever!
"You take this gun; you keep it. It's mine. I don't want to be able to hurt him, if I should ever lose my head. Sometimes when I set there an' look at him an' hear him cussin' me, I get hot in th' head; hot an' heavy an' it buzzes. I ... I thought maybe sometime I might go crazy an' shoot him,"—with deadly seriousness. "An' I wouldn't do that, ma'am, not to yours, no matter what he might do or say to me. I brought my rifle in to-day to have th' sights fixed; they needed it an' 't would get it out of th' house. You'll keep this gun, won't you, please, ma'am?"
His pleading was as direct as that of a child and, eyes on his with a mingling of emotions, Ann Lytton reached a groping hand for the weapon. She was stunned. Her nervous weakness, his strength, the putting into words of that great love he bore for her, the suggested picture of contrast with the man between them, the conflict it all aroused in her conscience, the reasonless surging of her deepest emotions, combined to bewilder the woman. She reached out slowly to take his weapon and do his bidding, moved by a subconscious desire to obey, and all the while her eyes grew wider, her breath faster in its slipping between her parted lips.
Her fingers touched the metal, warmed by his body heat, closed on it and her hand, holding the pistol, fell back to her side. She turned her face from him and, with a palm hard against one cheek, whispered,