“There’s no use in reckoning up Peter’s acts.  You know ’em as well as I do, Bill.  He was slick—­was Peter,” she went on, with an inflection of satisfaction.  She was returning to a lighter manner as she contemplated the cattle-thief’s successes.  “Cattle, mail-trains, mail-carts—­nothing came amiss to him.  In his own line Peter was a Jo-dandy.”  Her face flushed as she proceeded.  The half-breed blood in her was stirred in all its passionate strength.  “But he’d never have slipped the coyote sheriffs or the slick red-coats so long as he did without my help.  Say, Bill,” leaning forward eagerly and peering into his face with her beautiful glowing eyes, “for three years I just—­just lived!  Poor Peter!  Guess I’m reckoned kind of handy ’round a bunch of steers.  There aren’t many who can hustle me.  You know that.  All the boys on the round-up know that.  And why?  Because I learnt the business from Peter—­and Peter taught me to shoot quick and straight.  Those three years taught me a deal, and I take it those things didn’t happen for nothing,” with a moody introspective gaze.  “Those years taught me how to look after myself—­and my uncle.  Say, Bill, what I’m telling you may sicken you some.  I can’t help that.  Peter was my brother and blood’s thicker than water.  I wasn’t going to let him be hunted down by a lot of bloodthirsty coyotes who were no better than he.  I wasn’t going to let my mother’s flesh feed the crows from the end of a lariat.  I helped Peter to steer clear of the law—­lynch at that—­and if he fell at last, a victim to the sucking muck of the muskeg, it was God’s judgment and not man’s—­that’s good enough for me.  I’d do it all again, I guess, if—­if Peter were alive.”

“Peter had some shooting on the account against him,” said Bill, without raising his eyes from the contemplation of his cigarette.  The girl smiled.  The smile hovered for a moment round her mouth and eyes, and then passed, leaving her sweet, dark face bathed in the shadow of regret.  She understood the drift of his remark but in no way resented it.

“No, Bill, I steered clear of that.  I’d have shot to save Peter, but it never came to that.  Whatever shooting Peter did was done on his—­lonely.  I jibbed at a frolic that meant—­shooting.  Peter never let me dirty my hands to that extent.  Guess I just helped him and kept him posted.  If I’d had law, they’d have called me accessory after the fact.”

“Lord” Bill pondered.  His lazy eyes were half-closed.  He looked indifferent but his thoughts were flowing fast.  This girl’s story had given a fillup to a wild plan which had almost unconsciously found place in his active brain.  Now he raised his eyes to her face and was astonished at the setness of its expression.  She reminded him of those women in history whose deeds had, at various periods, shaken the foundations of empires.  There was a deep, smouldering fire in her eyes, for which only the native blood in her veins could account.