So there I stood, amidst silence, foolishly, breathing hard, my revolver smoking in my fingers and my enemy in a shockingly at my feet, gradually reddening the white of the torn soil. He was upon his face, his revolver hand outflung. He was harmless. The moment had arrived and passed. I was here alive, I had killed him.  
Then I heard myself .
 
“Have I killed him? I didn’t want to. I tell you, I didn’t want to.”
 
Figures rushed in between. Hands grasped me, me away, through a ; voices in my ear while I feebly resisted, a warm salty taste in my throat.
 
“I killed him. I didn’t want to kill him. He made me do it. He shot first.”
 
“Yes, yes,” they said, gruffly. “Shore he did; shore you didn’t. It’s all right. Come along, come along.”
 
Then——
 
“Pick him up. He’s bad hurt, himself. See that blood? No, ’tain’t his arm, is it? He’s bleedin’ internal. Whar’s the hole? Wait! He’s something.”
 
They would have carried me.
 
“No,” I cried, while their bearded faces swam. “He said ‘’Nuf’—he shot me . Not bad, is it? I can walk.”
 
“Not bad. you in the arm, if that’s all. What you spittin’ blood for?”
 
As they me I wiped my lips; the back of my hand seemed to be covered with thin blood.
 
“Where he struck me, once,” I .
 
“Yes, mebbe so. But come along, come along. We’ll tend to you.”
 
The world had grown darkened, so that we moved as through an obscuring veil; and I dumbly wondered whether this was night (had it been morning or evening when I started for the pond?) or whether I was dying myself. I peered and again made out the sober, stern faces hedging me, but they gave me no answer to my mutely anxious . Across a great distance we stumbled by the (the same wagons of a time agone), and halted at a fire.
 
“Set down. Fetch a blanket, somebody. Whar’s the water? Set down till we look you over.”
 
I let them sit me down.
 
“Wash your mouth out.”
 
That was done, pinkish; and a second time, clearer.
 
“You’re all right.” Jenks was ministering to me. “Swaller this.”
The odor of whiskey into my . I obediently swallowed, and and choked. Jenks wiped my face with a cloth. Hands were at my left arm; a bandage being wound about.
 
“Nothin’ much,” was the report. “Creased him, is all. Lucky he . It was comin’ straight for his heart.”
 
“He’s all right,” Jenks again asserted.
 
Under the bidding of the liquor the faintness from the and reaction was leaving me. The slight hemorrhage from the strain to my weak lungs had ceased. I would live, I would live. But he—Daniel?
 
“Did I kill him?” I . “Not that! I didn’t aim—I don’t know how I shot—but I had to. Didn’t I?”
 
“You did. He’ll not bother you ag’in. She’s yourn.”
 
That hurt.
 
“But it wasn’t about her, it wasn’t over Mrs. Montoyo. He me—dared me. We were man to man, boys. He made me fight him.”
 
“Yes, shore,” they agreed—and they were not believing. They still linked me with a woman, whereas she had figured only as a transient occasion.
 
Then she herself, My Lady, appeared, running in breathless and appealing.
 
“Is Mr. Beeson hurt? Badly? Where is he? Let me help.”
 
She knelt beside me, her hand grasped mine, she gazed wide-eyed and .
 
“No, he’s all right, ma’am.”
 
“I’m all right, I assure you,” I thickly, and helpless as a babe to the clinging of her cold fingers.
 
“How’s the other man?” they asked.
 
“I don’t know. He was carried away. But I think he’s dead. I hope so—oh, I hope so. The coward, the beast!”
 
“There, there,” they quieted. “That’s all over with. What he got is his own business now. He hankered for it and was bound to have it. You’d best stay right hyar a spell. It’s the place for you at present.”
 
They grouped apart, on the edge of the fire circle. The dusk had heightened apace (for nightfall this really was), the glow and barely touched their blackly outlined forms, the of their voices sounded . In the circle we two sat, her hand upon mine, thrilling me comfortably yet me. She surveyed me unwinkingly and grave—a triumph shining from her eyes there were seamy shadows etched into her white face. It was as though she were welcoming me through the outposts of hell.
 
“You killed him. I knew you would—I knew you’d have to.”
 
“I knew it, too,” I . “But I 256didn’t want to—I shot without thinking. I might have waited.”
 
“Waited! How could you wait? ’Twas either you or he.”
 
“Then I wish it had been I,” I attempted.
 
“What nonsense,” she flashed. “We all know you did your best to avoid it. But tell me: Do you think I dragged you into it? Do you hate me for it?”
 
“No. It happened when you were there. That’s all. I’m sorry; only sorry. What’s to be done next?”
 
“That will be , of course,” she said. “You will be protected, if necessary. You acted in self-defense. They all will swear to that and back you up.”
 
“But you?” I asked, arousing from............