“Going?” said Dunn hoarsely.  “Going to the Carquinez Woods, by God! to kill him before her. I’ll risk it, if you daren’t.  Let me succeed, and you can hang me and take the girl yourself.”

“Sit down, sit down.  Don’t be a fool, Jim Dunn!  You wouldn’t keep the saddle a hundred yards.  Did I say I wouldn’t help you?  No.  If you’re willing, we’ll run the risk together, but it must be in my way.  Hear me.  I’ll drive you down there in a buggy before daylight, and we’ll surprise them in the cabin or as they leave the wood.  But you must come as if to arrest him for some offense—­say, as an escaped Digger from the Reservation, a dangerous tramp, a destroyer of public property in the forests, a suspected road agent, or anything to give you the right to hunt him.  The exposure of him and Nellie, don’t you see, must be accidental.  If he resists, kill him on the spot, and nobody’ll blame you; if he goes peaceably with you, and you once get him in Excelsior jail, when the story gets out that he’s taken the belle of Excelsior for his squaw, if you’d the angels for your posse you couldn’t keep the boys from hanging him to the first tree.  What’s that?”

He walked to the window, and looked out cautiously.

“If it was the old man coming back and listening,” he said, after a pause, “it can’t be helped.  He’ll hear it soon enough, if he don’t suspect something already.”

“Look yer, Brace,” broke in Dunn hoarsely.  “D——­d if I understand you or you me.  That dog Low has got to answer to me, not to the law!  I’ll take my risk of killing him, on sight and on the square.  I don’t reckon to handicap myself with a warrant, and I am not going to draw him out with a lie.  You hear me?  That’s me all the time!”

“Then you calkilate to go down thar,” said Brace contemptuously, “yell out for him and Nellie, and let him line you on a rest from the first tree as if you were a grizzly.”

There was a pause.  “What’s that you were saying just now about a bearskin he sold?” asked Dunn slowly, as if reflecting.

“He exchanged a bearskin,” replied Brace, “with a single hole right over the heart.  He’s a dead shot, I tell you.”

“D——­n his shooting,” said Dunn.  “I’m not thinking of that.  How long ago did he bring in that bearskin?”

“About two weeks, I reckon.  Why?”

“Nothing!  Look yer, Brace, you mean well—­thar’s my hand.  I’ll go down with you there, but not as the sheriff.  I’m going there as Jim Dunn, and you can come along as a white man, to see things fixed on the square.  Come!”

Brace hesitated.  “You’ll think better of my plan before you get there; but I’ve said I’d stand by you, and I will Come, then.  There’s no time to lose.”

They passed out into the darkness together.

“What are you waiting for?” said Dunn impatiently, as Brace, who was supporting him by the arm, suddenly halted at the corner of the house.