The old savage instinct of ownership rose strong in him. She was his. He had won her by the fortune of war. He would keep her against all comers so long as he had life to fight. Night was falling softly over the hills. They would go forth into it together to a new heaven and a new earth.
He lifted her to her feet and brought up her horse. She looked at him in a silence that stripped him of his dreams.
"Come!" he said again, between clenched teeth.
"Not with you. I don't know you. Leave me alone. You killed him! You're a murderer!"
He stretched hands toward her, but she shrank from him, still in the dull stupor of horror that was on her spirit.
"Go away! Don't touch me! You and your miscreants killed him!" And with that she flung herself down again, and buried her face from the sight of him.
He waited doggedly, helpless against her grief and her hatred of him, but none the less determined to take her with him. Across the border he would not be a hunted man with a price on his head. They could be married by a padre in Sonora, and perhaps some day he would make her love him and forget this man that had come between them. At all events, he would be her master and would tie her life inextricably to his. He stooped and caught her shoulder. She had fainted.
A footfall set rolling a pebble. He looked up quickly, and almost of its own volition, as it seemed, the rifle leaped to both of his hands. A man stood looking at him across the plateau of the summit. He, too, held a rifle ready for instant action.
"So it's you!" Healy cried with an oath.
"Have you killed him?"
The outlaw lied, with swift, unblazing passion: "Yes, Buck Weaver, and tossed his body to the buzzards. Your turn now!"
"Then who is that with you there?"
"The woman you love, the woman that turned you and him down for me," taunted his rival. "After I've killed you we're going off to be married."
"Only a coyote would stand behind a woman's skirts and lie. I can't kill you there, and you know it."
Healy asked nothing better than an even break. He might have killed with impunity from where he stood. Yet pantherlike, he swiftly padded six paces to the left, never lifting his eyes from his antagonist.
Buck waited, motionless. "Are you ready?"
The outlaw's weapon flashed to the level and cracked. Almost simultaneously the other answered. Weaver felt a bullet fan his cheek, but he knew that his own had crashed home.