“Yes.”
The finality of it appalled her. She felt as if she were butting her head against a stone wall. She knew that argument and entreaty were of no avail, yet she desperately besought first one and then another of them to save the prisoner. Each in turn shook his head. She could see that none of them, save Rosario, bore him a grudge; yet none would 294 move to break the valley oath. At the last, she was through with her promises and her prayers. She had spent them all, and had come up against the wall of blank despair.
Then Jack’s grave smile thanked her. “You’ve done what you could, Melissy.”
She clung to him wildly. “Oh, no—no! I can’t let you go, Jack. I can’t. I can’t.”
“I reckon it’s got to be, dear,” he told her gently.
But her breaking heart could not stand that. There must somehow be a way to save him. She cast about desperately for one, and had not found it when she begged the outlaw chief to see her alone.
“No use.” He shook his head.
“But just for five minutes! That can’t do any harm, can it?”
“And no good, either.”
“Yet I ask it. You might do that much for me,” she pleaded.