“Ho, you! Jess!”
There was no answer; and he called again, this time his handsome face darkening. He had seen her from a distance outside the house, so there was no doubt of her being about.
Still he received no answer.
An oath followed. But just as he was about to call again he heard the sound of a skirt beyond the inner door. Instantly he checked his impulse, and where before his swift-rising anger had shone in his eyes a smile now greeted Jessie as she opened the door and entered the room.
For a moment no verbal greeting passed between them. The man was taking in every detail of her face and figure, much as a connoisseur may note the points of some precious purchase he is about to make, or a glutton may contemplate a favorite dish. He saw nothing in her face of the effects of the strain through which she had passed. To him her eyes were the same wonderful, passionate depths that had first drawn his reckless manhood to flout every risk in hunting his quarry down. Her lips were the same rich, moist, enticing lips he had pressed to his in those past moments of passion. The rounded body was unchanged. Yes, she was very desirable.
But he was too sure of his ground to notice that there was no responsive admiration in the woman’s eyes. And perhaps it was as well. She was looking at him with eyes wide open to what he really was, and all the revolting of her nature was uppermost. She loathed him as she might some venomous reptile. She loathed him and feared him. His body might have been the body of an Apollo, his face the most perfect of God’s creations. She knew him now for the cold-blooded murderer he was, and so she loathed and feared him.
There were stains upon his cotton shirt-sleeves, upon the bosom of it showing between the fronts of his unbuttoned waistcoat. There were stains upon his white moleskin trousers.
“Blood,” she said, pointing. And something of her feelings must have been plain to any but his infatuated ears.
He laughed. It was a cruel laugh.
“Sure,” he cried. “It was a great scrap. We took nigh a hundred head of Sid Morton’s cattle and burnt him out.”