"You better hadn't!" she warned, her finger now so hard on the trigger that the cylinder trembled. "I've got the whole United States ahind o' me now, and I shore hain't afeared to shoot. Ef you think I am, try me and see!"
The other prepared to play his last card. He had some faith in it. He tucked his thumbs under his homemade suspenders, and cocked his bullet-shaped head to one side.
"We've had a fine time a-playin' whoopy-hide, hain't we?" He tried to laugh, and failed. "But it's all come to a show-down now, I reckon. You've sp'iled it all; the fun's all over. Tot Singleton, you won't want me to go to jail when I've told ye what I've got to tell ye!"
"Tell it!" impatiently.
"All right. Well," leered Mayfield, "you rickollect 'at time me and yore pap went over to Shelton Laurel and stayed a week at the big shootin'-match, sev'ral year ago? And you rickollect yore pap acted pow'ful strange fo' a long time atter we'd got back? It was the talk o' the whole Singleton tribe. You rickollect, Tot?"
"Yes. Shorely," she nodded. "Git the rest of it out o' ye quick."
"All right. Well, yore pap he killed a man named Mort Gibson over thar," Cat-Eye Mayfield went on, "and I seed him do it. I was the only witness. I'm the only pusson on earth 'at knows who done it—'ceptin' yore pap. Take me to jail, and I'll shore tell who it was killed Mort Gibson. Then yore pap he'll land in the penitenchy even ef he don't hang!"
Tot Singleton saw light in a place that had been mysteriously dark to her for years.
"So that," she cried, shaken hard, "is why pap never would make you stop a-pesterin' me to marry you! He was afeard to make you mad, acause he was afeard you'd tell! But," with fine scorn, "he knowed he could trust me never to tie up to sech as you, o' course. Do ye reckon, Cat-Eye Mayfield, they'd take yore word about the killin', and you in jail?"
"Tumph! I'd jest tell 'em to ax yore pap about it, and he'd give hisself away. He hain't got over it yit. It's nigh driv' him crazy."