“Gentlemen—” I was beginning, when the sheriff stopped me.
“Mrs. Batterly,” he said, clearing his throat, and speaking raspingly, “this is your revolver?”
“Why, yes—” Haidee drew in her breath sharply—“why, yes,” she admitted.
I felt her hand tighten its hold on my arm.
“It is mine, surely,” she continued, as no one spoke. She looked from one to the other appealingly. “I am fond of shooting at a mark. I used it only this noon. I left it on the table after lunch when I went into the woods to sketch. I heard a shot fired soon after I left—but I thought nothing of it—rabbit hunters pass the cabin daily. When I came back to the cabin after a time I—I found my—husband on the floor, as you see him—” She halted, something in the eyes she saw fixed upon her caused her face to whiten. “Why,” she stammered—“why—you don’t think—think I—”
“Mrs. Batterly,” the sheriff broke in quickly, “I arrest you for the murder of your husband, Randall Batterly.”
I shall never forget the groping look she turned on me; the dumb appeal that struck to the center of my heart and set it quivering—the question in the big deep eyes, clear and pure as a rillet in the sun.
I don’t know how I gave her into the sheriff’s custody. I recall that my fists were doubled and that I mouthed useless imprecations, and that old Lundquist strove to reason with me, his lank arms wrapped about me restrainingly, as the sheriff bore Haidee away in his gig. I recall climbing into my saddle and riding away, the echo of Haidee’s parting injunction in my ears: “Find Wanza for me, please. She may be able to help me.”
And I recall that old Lundquist stood shaking his fist after me in the pergola.
Little I cared for old Lundquist or the pummeling I gave him. I dug my heels into Buttons’ sides. His hoofs fell with soft thuds on the fallen leaves that, imbedded in the damp soil, made a brown mosaic of my path. The bracing air was in my face, but I rode limp and flaccid, with cold beads of sweat upon my brow. “Oh, God,” I groaned, “Oh, God! Oh, God!” But I could not pray. I only raised my eyes. Overhead the afterglow shot the sky with rose and silver, and an apricot moon was rising over the mountains hooded in white mist. I kept my eyes lifted as I rode on through the soft dusk to Roselake in quest of Wanza.