'Listen, Helen. I no longer want to meet Jim Courtot. I would be content to let him pass by me and go on his own way now. But if he does come this way, if at last we must meet---- Well, my dear,' he sought to make his smile utterly reassuring, 'I have met Jim Courtot before.'
But her sudden fear, after the way of fear when there is an unfounded dread at the bottom of it, gripped her as it had never done before; she felt a terrified certainty that if the two men met it would be Alan who died. She began to tremble.
Far down in the hollow lying between Red Dirt Hill and the eminence whereon stood Sanchia and Courtot, they saw a man riding. He came into a clearing; had they not from the beginning suspected who it must be they would have known Longstreet from that distance, from his characteristic carriage in the saddle. No man ever rode like James Edward Longstreet. And Courtot and Sanchia had seen him.
He jogged along placidly. They could fancy him smiling contentedly. Helen and Howard watched him; he was coming toward them. They glanced swiftly across the ravine; there the two figures stood close together, evidently conversing earnestly. The sun was not yet up. Longstreet rode into a thickness of shadow and disappeared. In five minutes he came into sight again. Courtot and Sanchia had not stirred. But now, as though galvanized, they moved. Courtot leaped from his boulder and began hurrying down into the cañon, seeking to come up with the man on the horse. Sanchia followed. Even at the distance, however, she seemed slack-footed, like one who, having played out the game, knows that it is defeat.
'Papa is coming this way!--Jim Courtot is following him--in ten minutes more----'
She did not finish. Howard put his arms about her and felt her body shaking.
'You do love me,' he whispered.
She jerked away from him. A new look was in her eyes.
'Alan Howard,' she said steadily, 'I love you. With my whole heart and soul! But our love can never come to anything unless you love me just exactly as I love you!'
'Don't you know----'
'You do not know what it has meant to me, your shooting those two men in papa's quarrel. But they lived and I have tried to forget it all. If they had died, then what?' Her eyes widened. 'If you and Courtot meet, what will happen? If he kills you, there is an end. If--if you kill him, there is an end! Call it what you please, if it is not murder, it is a man killing a man. And it is horrible!'