He would have laughed had another told him. Virtue was a name and no more to the fat man. But in spite of himself those eight years under free skies had altered him. He had been growing when he thought he was standing still. When the eye plunges forty miles from mountain to mountain, through crystal-clear air, the mind is enlarged. He had lived exclusively among hard-handed men, rejoicing in a strength greater than their own. He suddenly found that the feeble hand from which he had so easily torn the weapon a moment before, had in an instant acquired strength to make or break him.
All that Jig could discern of this was that her life was no longer in danger, and that her enemy had been disarmed. But she was not prepared for what followed.
Dragging off his hat, as if he acted reluctantly, his eyes sank until they rested on the ground at her feet.
"Lady," he said, "I didn't know. I didn't even dream what you was."
29
Gradually she found her breath and greater self-possession.
"You mean I'm free?" she asked him. "You won't make me go into Sour
Creek?"
His face twisted as if in pain. "Make you?" he asked violently. "I'd blow the head off the first one that tried to make you take a step."
Suddenly it seemed to her that all this was ordered and arranged, that some mysterious Providence had sent this man here to save her from Sandersen and all the horror that the future promised, just as Sinclair had saved her once before from a danger which he himself had half created.
"I got this to say," went on Arizona, struggling for the words. "Looks to me like you might have need of a friend to help you along, wherever you're going." He shook his thick shoulders. "Sure gives me a jolt to think of what you must have gone through, wandering around here all by yourself! I sure don't see how you done it!"