After nearly an hour, she divided a wall of rank green undergrowth and stepped into a little, round patch of huckleberry bushes, in the center of which was a small brushwood fire—and beyond the fire, eating berries, his rifle lying across his knees, sat Cat-Eye Mayfield, who also was pale and haggard. He looked up. His jaws stopped their movement as though they had been that moment paralyzed. He stared at her half-defiantly and half-reproachfully.
She went closer to him, the big revolver ready in her hand, her gaze riveted on his.
"You're onder arrest fo' tryin' to kill Little Buck Wolfe," she said in a low voice that carried the ring of ice. With the forefinger of her left hand she pointed to the officer's shield that she wore over her heart like a target and a dare.
"Ye don't say!" he sneered.
"But I do say!" she replied.
"Depity-Sheriff Tot Singleton!" grinned Mayfield.
"C'rect, sir!" boldly. "It's jest what I am. I'll haf to ax ye to pass that 'ar rifle acrost to me, Mister Cat-Eye."
"Humph!" scornfully.
"Pass me that 'ar rifle, butt fust—pass it, quick!"
Mayfield saw, or imagined he saw, her finger tighten on the trigger. He gave her the gun, butt first, reluctantly. She lifted it in her left hand and brought it down hard on a stone, disabling the mechanism of the breech. Mayfield muttered an oath and leaped to his feet, but the revolver's muzzle held him off.