"About you?" asked the girl.
"I don't hear your words—hardly; I just hear the sound you make." He leaned forward again and cast out his arm so that the palm of his hand was turned up beneath her eyes. She could see the long, lean fingers. It suddenly came home to her that every strong man in the mountain desert was in deadly terror of that hand. Anne Withero was shaken for the first time.
"Listen to me," he was saying in that tense whisper which was oddly like the tremor of his hand, "I've been hungry for that voice all these weeks—and months."
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," said the girl, very grave. "I'm going to break up this cowardly conspiracy against you. I've written to my father to get the finest lawyer in the land and send him out here to make you—legal—again."
He began to smile, and shook his head.
"It's no use," he said. "Perhaps your lawyer could help me on account of Bill's death, but he couldn't help me from Hal."
"Are you—do you mean you're going to fight the other man, too?"
"He killed his horse chasing me," said Andrew. "I couldn't stop to fight him because I was comin' down here to see you. But when I go away I've got to find him and give
him a chance back at me. It's only fair."
"Because he killed a horse trying to get you, you're going to give him a chance to shoot you?"