She stood beside the rock from which the ledge was reached from below, and as if she had just stepped up into sight. Her rifle was so held in both hands that it could be fired from her hip, and at such close quarters with deadly accuracy. As she stood with startled eyes fixed on his haggard face, her slender neck and poised head were very familiar to de Spain.

And her expression, while it reflected her horrified alarm, did not conceal her anger and aversion at the sight of him. Unaware of the forbidding spectacle he presented, de Spain, swept by a brainstorm at the appearance of this Morgan––the only one of all the Morgans he had not fancied covering him and waiting to deliver his death-warrant––felt a fury sweep over him at the thought of being shot by a woman. The wild idea that she meant to kill him, which in a rational moment would never have entered his mind, now in his delirium completely obsessed him. Working, as it were, mechanically, even the instinct of self-defense asserted itself against 167 her. But enough of reason remained in his disordered senses to tell him that self-defense was out of the question. Whatever she meant to do, he could no more fire at this girl, even had he a chance––and he realized he was at her mercy––than he could at his sister; and he lay with his eyes bent on hers, trying to read her purpose.

She stood guarded, but motionless with surprise. De Spain turned himself slowly and, sitting up, waited for her to speak. There was little to hope for, he thought, in her expression. And all of his duplicity seemed to desert him before her cold resolution. The tricks he would have tried, at bay before a man, he felt no inclination to attempt. He read in her set face only abhorrence and condemnation, and felt in no way moved to argue her verdict. “I suppose,” he said, at length, not trying to disguise his bitter resentment of her presence, “you’ve come to finish me.”

His shirt stained and tattered for bandages, his hair matted in blood on his forehead, his eyes inflamed and sunken, his lips crusted and swollen, the birthmark fastened vividly on his cheek made him a desperate sight. Regarding him steadily, Nan, as bewildered as if she had suddenly come on a great wounded beast of prey still dangerous, made no response to his words. The two stared 168 at each other defiantly and for another moment in silence. “If you are going to kill me,” he continued, looking into her eyes without any thought of appeal, “do it quick.”

Something in his long, unyielding gaze impelled her to break the spell of it. “What are you doing here?” she demanded with anger, curbing her voice to control her excitement as best she could.

De Spain, still looking at her, answered only after a pause. “Hiding,” he said harshly.

“Hiding to kill other men!” Nan’s accusation as she clutched her rifle was almost explosive.

He regarded her coolly, and with the interval he had had for thinking, his wits were clearing. “Do I look like a man hunting for a fight? Or,” he added, since she made no answer, “like a man hunting for a quiet spot to die in? How,” he went on slowly, delirium giving place to indignation, “can you say I’m hiding here to kill other men? That’s what your people tell you, is it?”

“I know you are a murderer.”

In spite of his weakness he flushed. “No,” he exclaimed sharply, “I’m not a murderer. If you think it”––he pointed contemptuously to her side––“you have your rifle––use it!”

“My rifle is to defend myself with. I am not a public executioner,” she answered scornfully.

“You need no rifle to defend yourself from 169 me––though I am a murderer. And if you’re not a public executioner, leave me––I’m dying fast enough.”

“You came here to hide to kill somebody!” she exclaimed, as if the thought were a sudden explanation.

“What do you mean by ‘here’? I might better ask why you came here,” he retorted. “I don’t know where I am. Do I look as if I came here by choice?” He paused. “Listen,” he said, quite master of himself, “I’ll tell you why I came. I shall never get away alive, anyway––you can have the truth if you want it. I got off my horse in the night to get a drink. He bolted. I couldn’t walk. I climbed up here to hide till my wounds heal. Now, I’ve told you the truth. Where am I?”

The grip of her hands on the rifle might have relaxed somewhat, but she saw his deadly revolver in its accustomed place and did not mean to surrender her command of him. Nor would she tell him where he was. She parried his questions. He could get no information of any sort out of her. Yet he saw that something more than his mere presence detained and perplexed her. Her prompt condemnation of him rankled in his mind, and the strain of facing her suspicion wore on him. “I won’t ask you anything more,” he said 170 at length. “You do right to give me no information. It might help me save my life. I can’t talk any longer. You know you think I’ve no right to live––that’s what you think, isn’t it? Why don’t you shoot?” She only stared at him. “Why don’t you answer?” he demanded recklessly.

Nan summoned her resolution. “I know you tried to kill my cousin,” she said hotly, after he had taunted her once more. “And I don’t know you won’t try it again as soon as you are able. And I am going to think what to do before I tell you anything or do anything.”

“You know I tried to kill your cousin! You know nothing of the kind. Your cousin tried to kill me. He’s a bully and a coward, a man that doesn’t know what fair fighting means. Tell him that for me.”

“You are safe in abusing him when he’s not here.”

“Send him to me! This is no place for a woman that calls me what you call me––send your cousin and all his friends!” His voice shook with anger. “Tell him I’m wounded; tell him I’ve had nothing to eat since I fought him before. And if he’s still afraid”––de Spain drew and broke his revolver almost like a flash. In that incredibly quick instant she realized he might have threatened 171 her life before she could move a muscle––“tell your fine cousin I’ve got one cartridge left––just one!” So saying, he held in one hand the loaded cartridge and in the other the empty revolver.

“You think little of bloodshed, I know,” she returned unpleasantly.

“I think a whole lot,” he drawled in painful retort, “of fair fighting.”

“And I’m a woman––you do well to taunt me with that.”

“I did not taunt you with it. You are hatefully unjust,” he protested sullenly.

“You’ve asked me to go––I’m going. How much of what you tell me is true, I don’t know. But I can believe my own eyes, and I believe you are not in condition to do much injury, even if you came here with that intention. You will certainly lose your life if you move from your hiding-place.”

She started away. He leaned toward her. “Stop,” he said peremptorily, raising himself with a wrenching effort. Something in the stern eye held her. His extended hand pointed toward her as arbitrarily as if, instead of lying helpless at her feet, he could command her to his bidding. “I want to ask you a question. I’ve told you the truth. I have just one cartridge. If you are 172 going to send your cousin and his men here, it’s only fair I should know it now––isn’t it?”

Her face was hard in spite of the weakness he struggled to conceal. It annoyed her to think he had surmised she was revolving in her mind what to do. He was demanding an answer she had not yet given to herself.

“My cousin is wounded,” she said, pausing. And then with indecision: “If you stay here quietly you are not likely to be molested.”

She stepped down from the ledge as noiselessly as she had come. Shaken by the discovery she had so unexpectedly made, Nan retreated almost precipitately from the spot. And the question of what to do worried her as much as it worried de Spain. The whole range had been shaken by the Calabasas fight. Even in a country where appeal to arms was common, where men were ready to snuff out a life for a word, or kill for a mess of pottage––to settle for the least grave offense a dispute with a shot––the story of the surprising, unequal, and fatal encounter of the Calabasas men with de Spain, and of his complete disappearance after withstanding almost unheard-of odds, was more than a three days’ wonder; nothing else was talked of for weeks. Even the men in Morgan’s Gap, supposed to be past masters of the game played in the closed room at Calabasas, 173 had been stunned by the issue of the few minutes with Jeffries’s new man.

Nan, who had heard but one side of the story, pictured the aggressor from the tale of the two who lived to tell of the horribly sharp action with him. Morning, noon, and night she had heard nothing but the fight at Calabasas discussed by the men that rode in and out of the Gap––and in connection with it, de Spain’s unexplained flight and disappearance. Those that knew the real story of the conspiracy to kill him did not talk much, after the disastrous outcome, of that part of the affair. But Nan’s common sense whispered to her, whatever might be said about de Spain’s starting the fight, that one man locked in a room with four enemies, all dangerous in an affray, was not likely to begin a fight unless forced to––none, at least, but a madman would do so. She had heard stories, too, of de Spain’s drinking and quarrelling, but none that told them had ever seen him under the influence of drink or had had a quarrel with him except Gale and Sassoon––and these two were extremely quarrelsome.

Unhappy and irresolute, Nan, when she got home, was glad of an excuse to ride to Calabasas for a packet of dressings coming by stage from Sleepy Cat for Gale, who lay wounded at Satt 174 Morgan’s; and, eating a hasty luncheon, she ordered her horse and set out.

Should she tell her Uncle Duke of finding de Spain? Whenever she decided that she must, something in the recollection of de Spain’s condition unsettled her resolution. Tales enough of his bloodthirstiness, his merciless efficiency, his ever-ready craft and consummate duplicity were familiar to her––most of them made so within the last three days––for no one in her circle any longer professed to underrate the demonstrated resourcefulness of the man.

Yet only a few of these stories appealed to Nan’s innate convictions of truth and justice. She lived among men who were, for the most part, not truthful or dependable even in small things––how could they be relied on to tell the truth about de Spain’s motives and conduct? As to his deadly skill with arms, no stories were needed to confirm this, even though she herself had once overcome him in a contest. The evidence of this mastery had now a fatal pre-eminence among the tragedies of the Spanish Sinks. Where he lay he could, if he meditated revenge on her people, murder any of them, almost at will. To spare his life imperilled to this extent theirs––but surely he lay not far from death by exhaustion. Weighed against all she had ever listened 175 to concerning his deceit was the evidence of her own sight. She had seen men desperately ill, and men desperately stricken. This man was either both or she could never again believe her senses. And if he was not helped soon he would die.

But who was to help him? Certainly none of his friends could know where he was hidden or of his plight––no help could come from them unless she told them. If she told them they would try to reach him. That would mean an appalling––an unthinkable––fight. If she told her uncle, could she keep him from killing de Spain? She believed not. He might promise to let him go. But she knew her uncle’s ferocious resentment, and how easy it would be for him to give her fine words and, in spite of them, for de Spain to be found dead some morning where he lay––there were plenty of men available for jobs such as that.

All came back to one terrifying alternative: Should she help this wretched man herself? And if he lived, would he repay her by shooting some one of her own kin?

The long ride to Calabasas went fast as the debate swept on, and the vivid shock of her strange experience recurred to her imagination.

She drew up before the big barn. Jim McAlpin 176 was coming out to go to supper. Nan asked for her package and wanted to start directly back again. McAlpin refused absolutely to hear of it. He looked at her horse and professed to be shocked. He told her she had ridden hard, urged her to dismount, and sent her pony in to be rubbed, assuring Nan heartily there was not a man, outside the hostlers, within ten miles. While her horse was cared for, McAlpin asked, in his harmless Scotch way, about Gale.

Concerning Gale, Nan was non-committal. But she listened with interest, more or less veiled, to whatever running comment McAlpin had to offer concerning the Calabasas fight. “And I was sorry to see Gale mixed up in it,” he concluded, in his effort to draw Nan out, “sorry. And sorrier to think of Henry de Spain getting killed that way. Why, I knowed Henry de Spain when he was a baby in arms.” He put out his hand cannily. “I worked for his father before he was born.” His listener remained obdurate. There was nothing for it except further probing, to which, however, Jim felt abundantly equal. “Some say,” he suggested, looking significantly toward the door of the barn, and significantly away again, “that Henry went down there to pick a fight with the boys. But,” he asserted cryptically, “I happen to know that wasn’t so.”

“Then what did he go down there for?” demanded Nan indignantly, but not warily.

McAlpin, the situation now in hand, took his time to it. He leaned forward in a manner calculated to invite confidence without giving offense. “Miss Nan,” said he simply, “I worked for your Uncle Duke for five years––you know that.” Nan had, at least, heard it fifty times. “I think a good deal of him––I think a good deal of you, so does the missus, so does little Loretta––she’s always asking about you, the child is––and I hear and see a good deal here that other people don’t get next to––they can’t. Now Henry de Spain was here, with me, sitting right there where you are sitting, Miss Nan, in that chair,” declared McAlpin with an unanswerable finger, “not fifteen minutes before that fight began, he was there. I told you he never went down there to fight. Do you want the proof? I’ll tell you––I wouldn’t want anybody else to know––will you keep it?”

Nan seemed indifferent. “Girls are not supposed to keep secrets,” she said obstinately.

Her narrator was not to be balked. He pointed to the coat-rack on the wall in front of them both. “There is Henry de Spain’s coat. He hung it there just before he went down to the inn. Under it, if you look, you’ll find his belt of cartridges. Don’t take my word––look for yourself.”

Giving this information time to sink in, McAlpin continued. Nan’s eyes had turned, despite her indifference, to the coat; but she was thinking more intently about the belt which McAlpin asserted hung under it. “You want to know what he did go down to the hotel for that afternoon? I happen to know that, too,” averred McAlpin, sitting down, but respectfully, on the edge of the chair. “First I want to say this: I worked for your Uncle Duke five years.”

He paused to give Nan a chance to dispute the statement if she so desired. Then taking her despairing silence as an indorsement of his position in giving her a confidence, he went on: “Henry de Spain is dead,” he said quietly. She eyed him without so much as winking. “I wouldn’t tell it if he wasn’t. Some of the boys don’t believe he is. I’m not a pessimist––not a bit––but I’m telling you it’s a physical impossibility for a man to take the fire of four revolvers in the hands of four men like those four men, at arm’s length, and live. Henry de Spain is the cleverest man with a gun that ever rode the Spanish Sinks, but limits is limits; the boy’s dead. And he was always talking about you. It’s God’s truth, and since he’s dead it harms no one to tell it to you, though I’d never breathe it to another. He was fairly gone on you. Now 179 that’s the fair truth: the man was gone on you. I knowed it, where others didn’t know it. I was the only one he could always ask about whether you’d been here, and when; and when you might be expected coming again––and all such things like that.

“You don’t have to knock me down, Miss Nan, to put me wise about a man’s being keen on a girl. I’m a married man,” declared McAlpin with modest pride. “He thought all the time he was fooling me, and keeping covered. Why, I laughed to myself at his tricks to get information without letting on! Now, that afternoon he came in here kind of moody. It was an anniversary for him, and a hard one––the day his father was shot from ambush––a good many years ago, but nary one of us had forgot it. Then he happened to see your pony––this same pony you’re riding to-day––a-standing back there in the box-stall. He asked me whose it was; and he asked me about you, and, by jinx! the way he perked up when I told him you were coming in on the stage that afternoon! When he heard you’d been sick, he was for going down to the hotel to get a cup of coffee––for you!” McAlpin, like any good story-teller, was already on his feet again. “He did it,” he exclaimed, “and you know what he got when he stepped into the barroom.” 180 He took hold of de Spain’s coat and held it aside to enter his exhibit. “There,” he concluded, “is his cartridge-belt, hanging there yet. The boy is dead––why shouldn’t I tell you?”

Nan rode home much more excited, more bewildered than when she had ridden over. What should she do? It was already pretty clear to her that de Spain had not ridden unarmed to where she found him to ambush any of the Morgans. He was not dead; but he was not far from it if McAlpin was right and if she could credit her own senses in looking at him. What ought she to do?

Other things McAlpin had said crowded her thoughts. Strangest shock of all that this man of all other men should profess to care for her. She had shown anger when McAlpin dared speak of it; at least, she thought she had. And she still did not know how, sufficiently, to resent the thought of such audacity on de Spain’s part; but recalling all she could of his words and actions, she was forced to confess to herself that McAlpin’s assertions were confirmed in them––and that what McAlpin had said interpreted de Spain’s unvarying attitude toward her. This was, to say the least, a further awkward complication for her feelings. She already had enough to confuse them.