"Can you shoot to kill?" Jack asked Galway, in a piercing summons.

"Yes," drawled Galway.

"Then up with your gun--quick! There! A bead on Ropey Smith!"

Galway had the bead before Ropey could protest.

"Give Ropey ten seconds to drop his gun or we will care for him at the same time as Pete'" Jack concluded.

Ropey did not wait the ten seconds. He was over-prompt for the same reasons of temperament that made Pete Leddy prefer his own way of fighting.

"I take it that we can count on the neutrality of our spectators. They cannot be interested in the success of either side," Jack observed, with dry humor, but still methodically. "All they ask is a spectacle."

"Yes, you bet!" came a voice from the gallery, undisguisedly eager to concur.

"Now, Pete and Ropey," Jack began, and broke off.

There was a poignant silence that waited on the processes of his mind.

Not only was there no sound, but to Mary there seemed no movement anywhere in the world, except the pulse of the artery trying to drive its flood past the barrier of her thumb. Jack kept his bead unremittingly on Pete. It was Firio who broke the silence.

"Kill him! He is bad! He hates you!" said Firio.

"_Si, si_! If you do not kill him now, you must some time," said Ignacio.

Mary felt that even if Jack heard them he would not let their advice influence him. On the bank before she had hastened to him a strange and awful visitor in her heart had wished for Leddy's death. Now she wished for him to go away unharmed. She wished it in the name of her own responsibility for all that had happened. Yet her tongue had no urging word to offer. She waited in a supernatural and dreadful curiosity on Jack's decision. It was as if he were to answer one more question in explanation of the mystery of his nature. Could he deliberately shoot down an unarmed man? Was he that hard?

"I am thinking just how to deal with you, Pete and Ropey," Jack proceeded. "As I understand it, you have not been very useful citizens of Little Rivers. You can live under one condition--that you leave town and never return armed. Half a minute to decide!"

"I'll go!" said Pete.

"I'll go!" said Ropey.

"And keep your words?"

"Yes!" they a.s.sented.

But neither moved. The fact that Jack had not yet lowered his revolver made them cautious. They were obviously over-anxious to play safe to the last.

"Then go!" called Jack.

Pete and Ropey slouched away, leaving behind Ropey's gun, which was unimportant as it had only one notch, and Pete's precious companion of many campaigns with its six notches, lying on the sand.

"And, gentlemen," Jack called to the spectators, "our little entertainment is over now. I am afraid that you will be late for breakfast."

Apparently it came as a real inspiration to all at once that they might be, for they began to withdraw with a celerity that was amazingly spontaneous. Their heads disappeared below the skyline and only the actors were left. Pete and Ropey--Bill Lang following--walked away along the bed of the _arroyo_, instead of going over the bank. Pete paused when he was out of range. The old threat was again in his pose.

"I'm not through with you, yet!" he called.

"Why, I hope you are!" Jack answered.

He let his revolver fall with a convulsion of weakness. Mary wondered if he were going to faint. She wondered if she herself were not going to faint, in a giddy second, while the red spot on the sand shaped itself in revolving grotesquery. But the consciousness that she must not lift her weight from the artery was a centering idea to keep her faculties in some sort of equilibrium.

He was looking around at her, she knew. Now she must see his face after this transformation in him which had made her fears of his competency silly imaginings; after she had linked her name with his in an overwhelming village sensation. She was stricken by una.n.a.lyzable emotions and by a horror of her nearness to him, her contact with his very blood, and his power. She was conscious of a glimpse of his turning profile, still transfixed with the cool purpose of action. Then they were gazing full at each other, eyes into eyes, directly, questioningly. He was smiling as he had on the pa.s.s; as he had when he stood with his arms full of mail waiting for the signal to deposit his load. His devil had slipped back into his inner being.

He spoke first, and in the voice that went with his vaguest mood; the voice in which he had described his escape from the dinosaur whose scales had become wedged in the defile at the critical moment.

"You have a strong thumb and it must be tired, as well as all bluggy," he said, falling into a childhood symbol for taking the whole affair in play.

Could he be the same man who had said, "I am going to kill you!" so relentlessly? He had eased the situation with the ready gift he had for easing situations; but, at the same time, he had made those una.n.a.lyzable emotions more complex, though they were swept into the background for the moment. He glanced down at his leg with comprehending surprise.

"Now, certainly, you are free of all responsibility," he added. "You kept the strength in me to escape the fate you feared. Jim Galway will make a tourniquet and relieve you."

The first available thing for tightening the tourniquet was the barrel of Pete Leddy's gun and the first suggestion for material came from her.

It was the sash of her gown, which Galway knotted with his strong, sunburned fingers.

When she could lift her numbed thumb from its task and rose to her feet she had a feeling of relief, as if she were free of magnetic bonds and uncanny personal proximity. The incident was closed--surely closed. She was breathing a prayer of thanks when a remark from Galway to Jack brought back her apprehension.

"I guess you will have to postpone catching to-day's train," he said.

Certainly, Jack must remain until his wound had healed and his strength had returned. And where would he go? He could not camp out on the desert.

As Jasper Ewold had the most commodious bungalow it seemed natural that any wounded stranger should be taken there. The idea chilled her as an insupportable intrusion. Jack hesitated a moment. He was evidently considering whether he could not still keep to his programme.

"Yes, Jim, I'm afraid I shall have to ask you for a cot for a few days,"

he said, finally.

Again he had the right thought at the right moment. Had he surmised what was pa.s.sing in her mind?

"Seeing that you've got Pete Leddy out of town, I should say that you were fairly ent.i.tled to a whole bed," Jim drawled. "These two Indians here can make a hustle to get some kind of a litter."

Now she could go. That was her one crying thought: She could go! And again he came to her rescue with his smiling considerateness.

"You have missed your breakfast, I'll warrant," he said to her. "Please don't wait. You were so brave and cool about it all, and--I--" A faint tide of color rose to his cheeks, which had been pale from loss of blood.

For once he seemed unable to find a word.

Mary denied him any a.s.sistance in his embarra.s.sment.

"Yes," she answered, almost bluntly. Then she added an excuse: "And you should have a doctor at once. I will send him."

She did not look at Jack again, but hastened away. When she was over the bank of the _arroyo_ out of sight she put her fingers to her temples in strong pressure. That pulse made her think of another, which had been under her thumb, and she withdrew her fingers quickly.

"It is the sun! I have no hat," she said to herself, "and I didn't sleep well."

X

MARY EXPLAINS