He understood that in her brain had formed a vision of his fight with Devine and Ed True, and that, blurring that image, she was still seeing the picture of the dark forms rushing down into the gulch. She began to move on again, and he went at her side making no reply and communing with his own thoughts. She did not stop again until they came close to the canvas-walled cabin and saw the light shining wanly through and the shadows of the men inside. Then she lifted her face so that it was clear to him in the starlight and said to him slowly:
'I am going in and see if I can help with the wounded men now. I should have gone at first, I suppose. Maybe there is something I can do. You wouldn't want them to die, would you?'
'No,' he returned, 'I would not want them to die.'
In the silence which followed he could see that she was seeking to read his face and that she was very, very thoughtful.
'Tell me something,' she said abruptly. 'If one of them were Jim
Courtot—would you want him to die?'
At the mention of Courtot's name she made out a quick hardening of his mouth; she even saw, or fancied, an angry gathering of his brows. To-night's work was largely the work of Jim Courtot, and because of it Dry Gulch, which might have poured great heaps of gold at Helen's feet, was being wrangled over by a hundred men. He thought of that and he thought of other things, of how Courtot had fired on him from the dark long ago, of how Courtot was hunting him after Courtot's own tenacious fashion.
'Why do you ask that?' he demanded sharply.
She did not reply. Instead she turned from him and looked at the stars. And then she withdrew her eyes and turned them toward the light gleaming palely through the walls of canvas. But at last she lifted her face again to Howard.
'I'll go in now. And maybe I am tired after all. It has been a day, hasn't it? And please know that I felt that you did the right thing to-night, and that I don't know another man who would have been man enough to do it. Good night.'
'Good night,' he said, and watched her as she went into the house.