"I'll tell you about Babe Deveril later; and what's more, kid, I'll give you your show to throw in with him again. Now I'm cutting things short; you know why. I was after him for hammering me over the head with a gun; I was on your trail for killing a man. Now, since the man you killed ain't dead at all and since I've had a good talk with Deveril, I'm ready to let you both go. And just to take in a man named Standing."
Through one of those odd tricks by which chance asserts itself at times, Lynette made a discovery while Taggart was talking. She had felt something underfoot—and that something turned out to be Bruce Standing's rifle.
... What had this lost rifle to do with matters as they stood? Why all Jim Taggart's caution, if he were armed? But then Standing had brought Taggart's revolver back to the cabin with him.... What part in to-night's game was this fallen rifle to play? Her thoughts had been withdrawn; so, standing so that for the present Taggart could not possibly touch with his own foot that which she had stumbled on in the dark, she made him repeat what he had said.
Thus she caught a free instant for thought; thus also she grasped all that he had to say and to insinuate. And at the end she answered him with a baffling, feminine:
"Well?"
"I've got to talk fast!" growled Taggart. "He's in there, I know. Is he hurt?"
"You know that he is...."
"I don't mean that shot at Gallup's ... that you gave him...."
"I did not shoot him!" she cried out hotly, sick of accusation.
Taggart sneered at her, muttering threateningly: