June looked at him with wise, understanding mother-eyes. “It was kinda awful, wasn’t it? Gave me a turn when I saw them lying there. Must have been worse for you. Did you—hit ..?”
“No.” He was humiliated at the confession. “I didn’t fire a shot. Couldn’t, somehow. Everybody was blazin’ away at ’em. That’s the kind of nerve I’ve got,” he told her bitterly.
In her eyes the starlight flashed. “An’ that’s the kind I love. Oh, Bob, I wouldn’t want to think you’d killed either of those poor men, an’ one of them just a boy.”
“Some one had to do it.”
“Yes, but not you. And they didn’t have to brag afterward about it, did they? That’s horrible. Everybody going around telling how they shot them. As if it was something to be proud of. I’m so glad you’re not in it. Let the others have the glory if they want it.”
He tried to be honest about it. “That’s all very well, but they were a bad lot. They didn’t hesitate to kill. The town had to defend itself. No, it was just that I’m such a—baby.”
“You’re not!” she protested indignantly. “I won’t have you say it, either.”
His hungry eyes could not leave her, so slim and ardent, all fire and flame. The sweetness of her energy, the grace of the delicate lifted throat curve, the warmth and color of life in her, expressed a spirit generous and fine. His heart sang within him. Out of a world of women she was the one he wanted, the lance-straight mate his soul leaped out to meet.
“There’s no one like you in the world, June,” he cried. “Nobody in all the world.”
She flashed at him eyes of alarm. A faint pink, such as flushes the sea at dawn, waved into her cheeks and throat.