He wanted to laugh, but refrained, for under her smile he felt her earnestness. “Nothing else.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure!”
“Cross your heart to die?”
He performed that solemn and ancient function, and if she still entertained a doubt she stuffed it away down in consciousness.
“Very well.” With a little sigh of content she let her head fall back on his shoulder and a whisper escape from her upturned lips, “Now—you may.”
From his covert on the ridge Jake had observed the meeting, talk, struggle, Ramon’s retreat, also something which was hidden from the lovers in the valley below—the fact that, after crossing the ridge, Ramon had dismounted, pulled his rifle from the saddle slings, and crawled back on hands and knees to the edge of Jake’s covert. By that time the little tilt concerning Felicia was over, and as Lee’s head went to Gordon’s shoulder Ramon raised the rifle.
A shot at that short distance would have pierced them both, but as Ramon’s eye dropped to the sights a sharp order issued from the covert, “Throw up your hands! damn quick!”
A quick, startled glance showed Ramon the lean, grim face through a break in the chaparral. Not for nothing had the peones named Jake “The Python.” In moments such as this his lean personality, deadly eye, conveyed that very impression—of a snake coiled to strike. As Ramon’s hands went up, he stepped out and, crouching behind the ridge, took the other’s rifle and drove him downhill to his horse.
Having extracted the cartridge both from the rifle and from the revolver in Ramon’s holster, he threw the weapon at his feet. “I reckon I orter plug you, an’ I would for two cents. It’d be set down to raiders, which fixes it very nice. Sure, I reckon I orter do it, but if you’ve got a few thinks to the contrary spit ’em out.”