"They say right of me. I know it myself. Look at me now? What right have I here? If I'm found I'm the meat of the first man who sights me, but here I stay, and wait and watch for your smiles—like a love-sick boy. By Jove, you must despise me, Mary!"
"I don't try to understand you Westerners," she answered, "and that's why I have never questioned you before. Tell me, why is it that you come so stealthily to see me and run away as soon as any one else appears?"
He said with wonder: "Haven't you guessed?"
"I don't dare guess."
"But you have, and your guess was right. There's a price on my head. By right, I should be out there on the ranges with Pierre le Rouge and McGurk. There's the only safe place; but I saw you and I came down out of the wilds and can't go back. I'll stay, I suppose, till I run my head into a halter."
She was too much moved to speak for a moment, and then: "You come to me in spite of that? Dick, whatever you have done, I know that it's only chance which made you go wrong, just as it made Pierre. I wish—"
The dimness of her eyes encouraged him with a great hope. He stole closer to her.
He repeated: "You wish—"
"That you could be satisfied with a mere friendship. I could give you that, Dick, with all my heart."
He stepped back and smiled somewhat grimly on her.