"Couldn't help—what I did."
"You're a nicely brought up young woman—about as savage as the rest of your wolf breed," jeered Weaver.
Yet he exulted in her—in the impulse of ferocity that had made her strike swiftly, regardless of risk to herself, at the man who had hounded and harried her kin to the feud that was now raging. Her shy, untamed beauty would not itself have attracted him; but in combination with her fierce courage it made to him an appeal which he conceded grudgingly.
"What in Heaven's name brought you back after you had once got away?" Weaver asked.
The girl looked at Keller without answering.
"I reckon I can tell you that, seh," explained that young man. "She figured you would jump on me as the guilty party. It got on her conscience that she had left an innocent man to stand for it. I shouldn't wonder but she got to seeing a picture of you-all hanging me or shooting me up. So she came back to own up, if she saw you had caught me."
Weaver nodded. "That's the way I figure it, too. Gamest thing I ever saw a woman do," he said in an undertone to Keller, with whom he was now standing a little apart.
The latter agreed. "Never saw the beat of it. She's scared stiff, too. Makes it all the pluckier. What will you do with her?"
"Take her along with me back to the ranch."
"I wouldn't do that," said the young man quickly.