“I knew it was Trampas as soon as I saw his eyes.”
“My gracious!” her lover repeated with indulgent irony. “I must be mighty careful of my eyes when you're lookin' at 'em.”
“I believe he did that murder,” said the girl.
“Whose mind are yu' readin' now?” he drawled affectionately.
But he could not joke her off the subject. She took his strong hand in hers, tremulously, so much of it as her little hand could hold. “I know something about that—that—last autumn,” she said, shrinking from words more definite. “And I know that you only did—”
“What I had to,” he finished, very sadly, but sternly, too.
“Yes,” she asserted, keeping hold of his hand. “I suppose that—lynching—” (she almost whispered the word) “is the only way. But when they had to die just for stealing horses, it seems so wicked that this murderer—”
“Who can prove it?” asked the Virginian.
“But don't you know it?”
“I know a heap o' things inside my heart. But that's not proving. There was only the body, and the hoofprints—and what folks guessed.”