“Then—it's the old mood—the fear?” she whispered. “Tell me.”
“Yes. It haunts me. I'll be well soon—able to go out. Then that—that hell will come back!”
“No, no!” she said, with emotion.
“Some drunken cowboy, some fool with a gun, will hunt me out in every town, wherever I go,” he went on, miserably. “Buck Duane! To kill Buck Duane!”
“Hush! Don't speak so. Listen. You remember that day in Val Verde, when I came to you—plead with you not to meet Poggin? Oh, that was a terrible hour for me. But it showed me the truth. I saw the struggle between your passion to kill and your love for me. I could have saved you then had I known what I know now. Now I understand that—that thing which haunts you. But you'll never have to draw again. You'll never have to kill another man, thank God!”
Like a drowning man he would have grasped at straws, but he could not voice his passionate query.
She put tender arms round his neck. “Because you'll have me with you always,” she replied. “Because always I shall be between you and that—that terrible thing.”
It seemed with the spoken thought absolute assurance of her power came to her. Duane realized instantly that he was in the arms of a stronger woman that she who had plead with him that fatal day.
“We'll—we'll be married and leave Texas,” she said, softly, with the red blood rising rich and dark in her cheeks.
“Ray!”