Wordlessly she followed, her eyes held, fascinated by the great, tall bulk of him swinging on in front of her, carrying the heavy saddle with as little care to its weight as if he had been entirely unconscious of it, as no doubt such a man could be.  She knew that already he had ridden sixty miles today and that it was seven miles farther to the ranch where he would get another horse.  And yet there he strode on, swiftly, as though he had rested all day and now were going to walk the matter of a few yards.

She could not understand this man, whom, since she must, she followed.  Had he not told her there in the cabin when he had played at hiding his identity from her, that he knew she was armed?  And yet, encumbered with the saddle upon his shoulder, his right hand carrying the bridle, he turned his back square upon her with no glance to see if she were even now covering him with her revolver.  And had she not called him a coward, thought him a coward?  Was this the way a coward should act?

Again and again during those first minutes her hand crept to the bosom of her dress.  Did he know it? she wondered.  Was he laughing at her, knowing that she could not bring herself to the point of actually shooting?  But then, she might cover him, call to him that she would shoot if he made her, and so force him to return the money he had stolen.

“He would laugh at me,” she told herself each time, her anger at him and at herself rising higher and higher.  “He would know that I could not kill him.  Not in cold blood, this way!”

So Buck Thornton strode on, grim in the savage silence which gripped him, on through the shadows and out into the moonlight beyond the trees, and she followed in silence.  There were times when she hated him so that she thought that she could shoot, shoot to kill.  His very going with her angered her.  Was it not more play-acting, as insolent as anything he could do, as insolent as his kissing her had been!  She grew red and went white over it.  It was as though he were laughing into her face, making sport of her, saying, “I am a gentleman, you see.  I could stay here all night, and you would have to stay with me!  But I am not taking advantage of you; I am walking seven miles over a hard trail, carrying a pack like a mule, that you may sleep tonight under the same roof with another woman.”

Now she was tempted to wheel her horse, to turn back, to camp alone somewhere out there in the woods, or to ride the thirty miles back to Dry Town.  And now, remembering the bank notes which had been taken from her, remembering the insult in the cabin, she held on after him, resolved that she would not lose sight of this man, that she would see him handed over to justice when she could taunt him, saying:  “I didn’t shoot you, you see, because I am a woman and not a tough.  But I have given you into hands that are not woman’s hands, because I hate you so!”