He had no voice to answer her brave words for a minute, and then his sentences came uncertain and halting.

“You must think me a poor sort of friend, Judith, one who has been blind till the eleventh hour and is then found wanting.  I feel so guilty to you, to your brother’s wife, to that little child who put out his arms so trustfully to me that night, but I never imagined that things would come to such a pass as this.  The smaller cattle outfits have been doing a good deal of blustering, but the more conservative element supposed that they had them in check, and did not for a moment think that they would take the law into their own hands.  Believe me, this lawlessness has been in the face of every influence that could be brought to bear, and it shall not go unpunished.”

She spoke to him from the darkness, as the spirit of grief might speak.  “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, that is the justice of the plains.  But, Peter, it is but poor justice.  What’s done is done, and fresh violence will not give back Alida her husband nor the little ones their father.  What we need is friends, one or two loyal souls who, though knowing the hideous truth of this thing, will stand by us in our pitiful falsehood.  I have told no one, nor shall I, but you and—­Peter, you must not laugh at your fellow-conspirator—­Leander.”

He took her hands in his and pressed them; big hands they were, and hardened by many a homely task, but withal tender and with the healing quality of womanliness in the touch of their warm, supple fingers.  But to-night she did not seem to know that he held them, nor to be conscious of his presence.  The woman in her was dead of grief.  The white spirit in her place, that plotted and planned that Jim’s children and Jim’s wife might not from henceforth walk in the shadow of the gallows, was beyond the prompting of the flesh.  And again she spoke to him in the same far-away voice, with the same far-away look in her eyes.

“You must know, Peter, that Leander is at heart of the salt of the earth.  I told him about it all, and he asked to be given the commission to deal with the men.  He has risen to his post magnificently.  I heard him swear the wretches to secrecy, hint to them that he had a great story to tell them.  They were frightened, and listened.  And the poor little man that we have so despised told them convincingly how Jim had made good his escape—­ even Henderson half believes we saved him.”

Peter hoped that she would accuse him of his half-heartedness indirectly, if not openly.  It would have made his conscience more comfortable, and his conscience troubled him sorely to-night.  It was that fatal habit of procrastination that had brought this thing about.  He had hesitated all these weeks about Judith, and while he had threshed out the pro and con of her disadvantageous family connection, this hideous tragedy had happened.