“It’s Will,” she said, with a sort of deliberate measuring of her words. “He’s gone to kill Elia. Out there, back at the bluff. It’s for setting the men after him. And––then, and then he’s coming back–––”
Jim was staggered. He looked at the woman wondering if she had suddenly lost her senses.
“And I came back to tell you he’d got clear away. By Heaven! And he did this?” He indicated the bonds he had just removed, and his eyes darkened with sudden fury.
The woman nodded. She was holding herself with all her might.
“Yes, but––that’s nothing.” Suddenly she let herself go. All the old terror surged uppermost again. “But don’t wait! Jim, save him for my sake! Save him for me! Oh, my poor, helpless brother! Jim––Jim, you are the only one I can look to. Oh, save him! He’s all I have––all I have.”
It was a dreadful moment for the man. The woman he loved half dead with terror and the cruel handling dealt her by her husband. Now she was appealing to him as the only man in the world she could appeal to. His love rushed to his head and came near to driving him to the one thing in the world he knew he must not do. He longed to crush her in his strong arms, and proclaim his right to protect her against the world. He loved her so that he wanted to defy everybody, all the world, that he might claim her for his own. But she was not his. And he almost spoke the words aloud to convince himself and drive back the demon surging through his blood.
“Where did you say he was?” he demanded, almost savagely in his tremendous self-repression.
“At the bluff, out back. Hurry, hurry, for––God’s sake!”
That was better. The less personal appeal helped him to calm himself.