"But," she said, "if not I, then who?"
"Jim Taggart," he said as unhesitatingly as he had spoken before. "Jim told you that he saw, didn't he? That he was Johnny on the spot? Of course he was! And we'd had our plain talk. And he figured it out, that unless that very day I had changed my papers, I still named him in them my old bunk-mate and friend, and that I'd not forget him with a legacy! If I had died under that bullet, Jim Taggart would have had it doped out that he'd stand to win about a hundred thousand dollars! And for a tenth of that he'd crucify Christ!"
"But...."
"There are no buts about it! You did not do it; then Jim Taggart did. He shot me last night, a second time and the second time in the back! He was once a man; now he's a Gallup dog, a man gone to seed, a cur and one for such as you and me to forget about. I hope to high heaven I never see the man again; for the sake of what has been between Jim Taggart and me, when both of us were younger, I'd rather let the past bury its dead. For if he ever comes trailing his filth across my trail again, I'll smash him into the earth." He made a wide angry gesture, as though he would wipe an episode and a man out of his life. "But you interrupt me; I was going to say something. Just this: I'll leave you alone. For an hour, for a dozen hours! You want rest, you want solitude and a chance to think. So do I. I can chain you to a tree and be sure of you! Or I can ask you to give me your word that you'll wait here until I come back to you ... and I already know you well enough to know that will hold you tighter than any chain that was ever forged!"
Lynette, without hesitating, answered:
"I do want rest and I do want to be alone. Is that to be wondered at? Until noon I'll wait for you to come back."
"Until high noon," he said. "And, girl, you pledge me your word on that?"
"Yes!"