She raised her head and looked at him, the brush poised in one hand. “——­ you, Bull,” she drawled at him.  “I’m tellin’ you, because I felt like it.”

Bull shot forth a hand and grabbed her right wrist.  Marie, as a whole, did not move.  But her left hand dropped languidly and nestled in the overhang of her bodice.

“Bull,” she said, softly, staring straight into the evil eyes glowering upon her.  “Bull, bad as you are, you ain’t never laid a hand on me yet.  You ain’t gonna begin now, are you?”

Bull’s great fingers began to tighten on her wrist, slowly, inexorably.

“I’m sorry, Bull,” she resumed, when he made no reply, “but I got a derringer pointin’ straight at yore stomach.  Now you ain’t gonna lemme make a mess on my clean carpet, are you?”

Bull released her wrist as though it burnt him.

“You devil!” he exclaimed.  “I believe you’d do it.”

“Shore I would,” she affirmed, serenely, dragging a small and ugly derringer from its place of concealment and balancing it on a pink palm.  “I’ll drill you in one blessed minute if you don’t keep yore paws to home.  They’s some things, Bull, you can’t do to me.  An’ one of them things is hurting me.  I don’t believe in corporal punishment, Bull.”

“I wanna know what you horned in for,” he demanded, pounding the table till the lamp danced again.

“If you only knowed what a silly fool you looked,” she commented, “you’d sit down and take it easy....  That’s right, tell the neighbours, do!  Squawk out good and loud how yore bushwhackin’ li’l killing turned out a misdeal.  Shore, I’d do that, if I was you.  Whadda you guess they pay Jake Rule an’ Kansas Casey for, huh?”

“What did you get in front of him for?” Bull persisted in a lower tone.  “I pretty near had him, but you—­Gawd, I could wring yore neck!”

“But you won’t,” she reminded him, sweetly.  “Lookit here, Bull, if you hadn’t locked the door leading up the stairs to the Starlight’s loft, I’d ‘a’ come after you there and done my persuadin’ of you right in the loft.  As it was when I heard what you were up to—­nemmine how I heard.  I heard, that’s enough—­I had to go out in the street and do what I could there.  I don’t believe the feller liked it much, neither.”

“But what’s he to you?  You ain’t soft on him, are you, account of what he done for that yellow mutt of yores?”

“I owe him something,” she evaded.  “That dog—­I like that dog.  And then that man treats me like a lady.  It ain’t every man treats me like a lady.”

“I should hope not,” guffawed the amiable Bull.

“Now that’s a right funny joke,” she assured him.  “It almost makes me laugh.  Still, alla same, I got feelin’s.  I’m a human being.  And you’ll notice molasses catches a heap more flies than vinegar does.  I like that Dawson man, and I ain’t gonna see him hurt.”

“Did you tell him it was me up there with a rifle?” There was a hint of unease in the blustery tone.