"You're not going to shoot me like a dog, and put me down there, are you?" said he, trembling.
"Like a dog?" said I passionately; "did you not try to smother me like a bear in his den, to burn me alive in my own house? Do as I tell you, or I'll shoot you now and roll your body in the river! Go!"
And he went as I asked him.
"Have you got any cartridges?" I demanded.
He pointed to his belt, and growled that he had plenty.
"Then stay there, and I will tell you what I will do with you. I am going to empty your revolver, and you can have it when it is empty. I will get off my horse and then you can load it again, and when I see you have filled it, you can do your best for yourself. Do you hear me?"
He nodded his head, and kept his eyes fixed on me anxiously, as though not daring to hope I was going to be so foolish as my word. But I was, even to the extent of firing his revolver into the air, though I had no suspicion of what I was really doing, nor what such an act would bring about.
I alighted from my horse, and let him go, for there was no danger of his running away. I even struck him lightly, and sent him up the trail out of the way of accident; and then, keeping my own revolver pointed at Jim, who stood like a statue, I raised his in my left hand. I fired, and the reports rang out over the hills. I threw Siwash Jim his weapon, saying:
"Load the chambers slowly, and count as you do so."
What a fool I was, to be sure, not to have shot him dead and let him lie! Though I should not have been free from the dangers that encompassed me, yet they would have been fewer, far fewer, and more easily contended with. But I acted as Fate would have, and even as I counted I heard Jim count too, in a strained, hoarse voice—one, two, three, four, five, six—and he was an armed man again, armed in the light, almost half-way between us, that glittered in his eyes and fell on my face. And it was his life or mine; his life that was worth nothing, and mine that was precious with the possibilities of love that I yet knew not, of love that was hurrying toward me even then, side by side with hate and death.