She meant to keep him from killing Beasley if she sacrificed every last shred of her pride. And she stamped the look of his face on her heart of hearts to treasure always. The thrill, the beat of her pulses, almost obstructed her thought of purpose.
"Nell, just now--when you're overcome--rash with feelin's--don't say to me--a word--a--"
He broke down huskily.
"My first friend--my--Oh Dale, I KNOW you love me! she whispered. And she hid her face on his breast, there to feel a tremendous tumult.
"Oh, don't you?" she cried, in low, smothered voice, as his silence drove her farther on this mad, yet glorious purpose.
"If you need to be told--yes--I reckon I do love you, Nell Rayner," he replied.
It seemed to Helen that he spoke from far off. She lifted her face, her heart on her lips.
"If you kill Beasley I'll never marry you," she said.
"Who's expectin' you to?" he asked, with low, hoarse laugh. "Do you think you have to marry me to square accounts? This's the only time you ever hurt me, Nell Rayner.... I'm 'shamed you could think I'd expect you--out of gratitude--"
"Oh--you--you are as dense as the forest where you live," she cried. And then she shut her eyes again, the better to remember that transfiguration of his face, the better to betray herself.
"Man--I love you!" Full and deep, yet tremulous, the words burst from her heart that had been burdened with them for many a day.
Then it seemed, in the throbbing riot of her senses, that she was lifted and swung into his arms, and handled with a great and terrible tenderness, and hugged and kissed with the hunger and awkwardness of a bear, and held with her feet off the ground, and rendered blind, dizzy, rapturous, and frightened, and utterly torn asunder from her old calm, thinking self.
He put her down--released her.
"Nothin' could have made me so happy as what you said." He finished with a strong sigh of unutterable, wondering joy.
"Then you will not go to--to meet--"
Helen's happy query froze on her lips.
"I've got to go!" he rejoined, with his old, quiet voice. "Hurry in to Bo.... An' don't worry. Try to think of things as I taught you up in the woods."
Helen heard his soft, padded footfalls swiftly pass away. She was left there, alone in the darkening twilight, suddenly cold and stricken, as if turned to stone.
Thus she stood an age-long moment until the upflashing truth galvanized her into action. Then she flew in pursuit of Dale. The truth was that, in spite of Dale's' early training in the East and the long years of solitude which had made him wonderful in thought and feeling, he had also become a part of this raw, bold, and violent West.