"Then take your medicine, and may God have mercy on your dirty soul!" And, as Bradley screamed out and held up his hands in sudden, overpowering fear, Dixie sprang forward and wrested the weapon from Henley's hand.
"No," she said—"no, you sha'n't kill him. Hank Bradley, go! Go, I tell you! I won't have blood spilt over me. I've got a right to demand that, and I do demand it. Go, I tell you! I'm going to keep this gun to protect myself with. I live in a country of outlaws, and I'm going to defend myself from now on. Go! What are you waiting for?"
Muttering and growling in sullen defiance, Bradley got to his feet, his battered face and eyes swollen.
"You've got the best of the game so far," he snarled at Henley, "but it's not ended. You'll hear from me."
"I'll tell you one thing, Hank," Henley said, as he glared at the man, "you are leaving here now, but if I ever meet you face to face in town, or anywhere else, I'll kill you as sure as there's a God. I've said it, and I mean it—I'll kill you as I would a snake."
Henley and Dixie stood in silence and watched him as he entered the wood and strode farther into its depths. They heard the cracking of dry twigs under his feet as he steadily receded, the sound of his untoward progress growing fainter and fainter in the distance.
"I'll be sorry to the day of my death that I didn't kill him," Henley panted, the wild fury unabated in his voice, face, and eyes. "Why, he was treating you like a dog; he actually proposed, actually dared to hint that his dirty money—my God! and I let him walk off on his two feet."
"I know, I know," Dixie muttered, soothingly, and she forced a smile as she looked at the revolver in her hand, "and oh, Alfred, I'm just girl enough to be glad you come as you did, and even to see it work you up like it has; but at a time like this a woman must act and think for a man when he is all wrought up and half out of his head. I couldn't prevent what he done. He was waiting for me at the end of the street and insisted on walking with me. I begged him to go back, but he was talking so loud and rough that I was afraid folks would make remarks. I hated to call for help; I'm neither sugar nor salt, and am able to care for myself. But I'd never seen him as drunk as that before, and, well, if you hadn't come—"
She shuddered convulsively. He looked at her wrist, which she kept touching with her handkerchief; the skin was broken and the flesh bruised where Bradley had clutched it.
"My God!" Henley took it gently in his throbbing hands and looked at it with glaring eyes, "and I let him walk away! He's free now, but, as there is a God overhead, I'll—"