He followed her more slowly. A young moon hung in the western sky. The air was crisp with the coming frost. The path was strewn with dead cottonwood leaves which rustled dryly under their feet.
At the spring, shadowed by the biggest cottonwood, she waited for him.
“I wish my father would cut down that tree,” she said, shivering.
“You are cold,” he said. His voice was not quite steady. He took off his coat and wrapped it around her, despite her protests. He wanted to hold her then, but he did not, though the touch of her sent the blood bounding riotously through his veins.
“You shall wear the coat I—do not want you to go in yet.”
“But Sade has finished, and people will be coming soon.”
“I will not keep you long. I want you to—Mary, my girl, I tried to kill Black, but—Jim—” his voice choked a little—“if it hadn’t been for Jim, Black would have killed me. I thought I could do it. I meant to have you. Jim said it was all the same—his doing it in my stead. I came to-night to ask you if it is the same. Is it, Mary?”
She did not answer for a little while. How still a night it was! Lights twinkled from the windows of the new house. Now and then a dry leaf rustled as some one, the man, the girl, or the horse, moved.
“It is the same,” she said at last, brokenly.
Her eyes were heavy with unshed tears. “But I never meant it, Paul. I was wild that night, but I never meant that you or—Jim should take life or—or—give yours. I never meant it!”