At the first word Adene had turned his head merely, showing no disposition to get beyond Jabe’s reach. But in the instant of her demand Beath rose up from behind some boxes, grasped the gun, twisting its barrel upward, and disarming Vesta. Ross sprang toward his sweetheart, hit out at the clerk’s unguarded side, and sent him staggering across the room, to fall sprawling at his employer’s feet. For a long moment while Beath was scrambling to hands and knees, life and death seemed to hang in the balance as old Jabe studied the two opposite; mechanically he had taken the gun Beath thrust into his hand. When Vesta saw it in his grasp, she flung herself upon her lover’s breast, clasping her arms about him, protecting his life with hers.
“Me first,” she screamed. “You’ll have to kill me first.” She waited for the bullet.
Jabe interrogated the pair with remorseless eye; he moved forward a pace, though Sam Beath on all fours thought it was plenty close to shoot. His gun was not raised. Instead, the old man and the young were studying each other once more, speeding messages from eye to eye above Vesta’s bent head. At last Jabe seemed to find that for which he sought. He looked long at the daughter who defied him in words, and her lover who braved him in action. Adene read the look aright.
“You’re bid to the weddin’ at Brush Arbor church, father-in-law,” he said in the tone of one who finds a satisfactory answer to a riddle.
The gun-butt rattled on the puncheon floor.
“Will your dugout hold three?” asked Jabe.
Vesta stirred, but still feared to look up.
“Shore; five, by crowdin’,” came the answer.
The girl raised her head, glanced incredulously from father to lover, and a light of comprehension dawned in her eyes.
“An’ me,” yammered Sam Beath. “What about me?”