“I don’t ask no help,” said Lew Hervey, but his voice was husky and uneven.  “I’ll stand my ground with any man, gun-fighter or not!”

“Please be quiet and let me handle this affair,” said the girl.  “As a matter of fact, it’s ended.  If you won’t take the money from Mr. Hervey, I’ll pay it to you myself.  How much?”

“Nothing,” said Red Perris.

“Are you going to give me an example of wounded virtue?” cried Marianne, white with contempt.

He was as pale as she, and taking off his hat he began to dent and re-dent its four sides.  The girl, looking at that red shock of hair and the lowered eyes, guessed for the first time that he was suffering an agony of humiliation.  Half of her anger instantly vanished and remembering her passion of the moment before, she began to wonder what she had said.  In the meantime, shrugging his shoulders with a forced indifference, Hervey crossed the patio and she was aware that he was received in silence—­no murmurs of congratulation for the manner in which he had borne himself during the interview.

“I got to ask you to gimme about two minutes of listening, Miss Jordan.  Will you do it?”

“At least I won’t stop you.  Say what you please, Mr. Perris.”

She wished heartily that she could have spoken with a little show of relenting but she had committed herself to coldness.  In her soul of souls she wanted to bid him take a chair and tell her frankly all about it, assure him that after a moment of blind anger she had never doubted his straightforward desire to serve her.  He began to speak.

“It’s this way.  I come out here to shoot a hoss, and I’ve worked tolerable hard to get in rifle range.  I guess Hervey has been saying that I’ve got into shooting distance a dozen times but it ain’t true.  He happened to be sneaking about to-day, and he saw Alcatraz come close by me for the first time.”

He paused.  “I’ll give you my word on that.”

“You don’t need to” said the girl, impetuously.

His eyes flashed up at her, at that, and he stood suddenly straight as though she had given him the right to stop cringing and talk like a man.  What on earth, she wondered, could have forced the man to such humility?  It made her shrink as one might on seeing an eagle cower before a wren.  As for Perris, his resentment was in no wise abated by her friendliness.  She had given him some moments of torture and the memory of that abasement would haunt him many a day.  He mutely vowed that she should pay for it, and went on:  “I sure wanted to sing when I caught Alcatraz in the sights.  I pulled a bead on him just behind the shoulder but I could see the muscles along his shoulders working and it was a pretty sight, Miss Jordan.”

She nodded, frowning in the intentness with which she followed him.  She had thought of him as one with the careless, mischievous soul of a child but now, in quick, deep glances, she reached to profounder things.