Allen liked his son-in-law, and was going to stand by him, but in Arizona the saying "All's fair in love and war" is not accepted at its face value.
"I didn't," acknowledged Jack. "I was desperate at the thought of losing her. She loved me, and had forgotten him—she's happy with me now."
"I reckon that's right," was Jim's consoling reply.
To clinch his argument and soothe his troublesome conscience, Jack continued: "She never would have been happy with him."
"That's what I told him," declared Allen. "He knew it, an' that's why he went away—an' Echo—no matter what comes, she must never know. She'd never forgive you—an', fer that matter, me, neither."
Jack looked long out of the window toward the distant mountains—the barrier behind which Dick was wandering in the great desert, cut off from the woman he loved by a false friend.
"How I have suffered for that lie!" uttered Jack, in tones full of anguish. "That's what hurts me most—the thought that I lied to her. I might have killed him that night," pondered Jack. He shuddered at the thought that he had been on the point of adding murder to the lie. He had faced the same temptation which Dick had yet to overcome.
"Mebbe you did. There's more'n one way of killin' a man," suggested Allen.
Jack swung round and faced him. The observation had struck home. He realized how poignantly Dick must have endured the loss of Echo and thought of his betrayal by Jack. As he had suffered mentally so Dick must be suffering in the desert. In self-justification he returned to his old argument.
"I waited until I was sure he was dead. Six months I waited after we heard the news. After I had told Echo I loved her and found that I was loved in return—then came this letter. God! What a fight I had with myself when I found that he lived—was thinking of returning home to claim her for his own. I rode out into the hills and fought it out all alone, like an Indian—then I resolved to hurry the wedding—to lie to her—and I have been living that lie every minute, every hour."