Then he went to the door. Standing in it, he looked as he had looked
that day when he had humiliated Neal Taggart in her presence. The
gentleness which she had seen in him some hours before--and which she
had welcomed--had disappeared; his lips had become stiff and pale
again, his eyes were narrowed and brilliant with the old destroying
fire. She grew rigid and drew a deep, quivering breath, for she saw
that the pistol was still in his hand.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I reckon old Taggart will still be waitin' in the timber grove," he
said with a short, grim laugh. "They've bothered me enough. I'm goin'
to send him where I sent his coyote son."
At that word she was close to him, her hands on his shoulders.
"Don't!" she pleaded; "please don't!" She shuddered and cast a quick,
shrinking glance at the man on the floor. "There has been enough
trouble tonight," she said. "You stay here!" she commanded, trying to
pull him away from the door, but not succeeding.
He seized her face with his hands in much the same manner in which he
had seized it in his father's office on the night of his return to the
Lazy Y--she felt the cold stock of the pistol against her cheek and
shuddered again. A new light had leaped into his eyes--the suspicion
that she had seen there many times before.
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