“Since you make a point of it, I’ll give him his chance.”
“You’ll let him go?” The joy in her voice was tremulously plain.
He laughed, leaning carelessly against the mantelshelf. But his narrowed eyes watched her vigilantly. “I didn’t say I would let him go. What I said was that I’d give him a chance.”
“How?”
“They say he’s a dead shot. I’m a few with a gun myself. We’ll ride down to the plains together, and find a good lonely spot suitable for a graveyard. Then one of us will ride away, and the other will stay, or perhaps both of us will stay.”
She shuddered. “No—no—no. I won’t have it.”
“Afraid something might happen to me, ma’am?” he asked, with a queer laugh,
“I won’t have it.”
“Afraid, perhaps, he might be the one left for the coyotes and the buzzards?”
She was white to the lips, but at his next word the blood came flaming back to her cheeks.