He glowered at the crowd that was forming around him, as crowds invariably form in any controversy, and then started toward the door, but he made a grave mistake. He called back a vile epithet as he went.
“Stop!” she commanded him, with an imperious, compelling tone.
He half-turned, and then shrugged his shoulders, and made as if to move on.
“Stop, I said!”
He turned again to face a pistol which she had snatched from her jacket, and now the partners, amazed, understood what that swift motion had meant. He halted irresolutely.
“You used a name toward me that I permit no man to use,” she said fiercely. “So I shall explain to these men of Goldpan who you are, Gus Wolff! You were in Butte five years ago. You induced a poor, silly little fool named Rose Trevor to leave the dance hall where she worked, 125 and go with you. You were one of those who believe that women are made to be brutalized. But good as most of them are, and bad as some of them are, there is none, living or dead, that you are or were fit to consort with. You murdered her. Don’t you dare to deny it! They found her dead outside of your cabin. They arrested you, and tried you, and should have hanged you, but they couldn’t get the proof of what everybody believed, that you––you brute––had killed, then thrown her over the rocks to claim that she had fallen there in the darkness.”
She paused as if the tempest of her words had left her breathless, and men glared at him savagely. It seemed as if every one had crowded forward to hear her denunciation.
“Bah!” she added scornfully. “The jury was made up of fools, and men knew it. The sheriff himself told you so when he slipped you out of the jail where he had protected you, and let you loose across the border in the night. Didn’t he? And he told you that if ever you came back to Butte, he would not turn a hand to keep you from the clutches of the mob; didn’t he? And now you are plain ‘Mister Brown,’ working somewhere back up in the hills, are you? 126 Well, Mr. Brown, you keep away from the High Light. Get out!”
Some one made a restless motion, and declared the man should be hanged, even now, but The Lily turned her angry eyes on the speaker, and silenced him.
“Not if I can help it, or any of my friends can,” she said coolly. “There’ll be no mobbing anybody around here. I’ve said enough. Let him alone, but remember what kind of a blackguard he is. That’s all!”