At last, nerved to the ordeal by the knowledge that each succeeding moment was making his position more difficult, and his ultimate pardon less certain, he wrenched himself free and stood up, his face crimson.

“Look here, ma’am——­”

“Mary!” she corrected, shaking a finger at him.

“Mary,” he repeated tonelessly, “now look here,” he went on hoarsely.  “I want to tell you that I ain’t the man you take me to be.  I’m——­”

“Yes, you are,” she insisted, smiling and placing her hands on his shoulders.  “You are a real man.  I’ll wager Dale thinks so; and Peggy Nyland, and Ben.  Now, wait!” she added as he tried to speak.  “I want to tell you something.  Do you know what would have happened if you had not got here today?

“I’ll tell you,” she went on again, giving him no opportunity to inject a word.  “Dale would have taken the Double A away from me!  He told me so!  He was over here yesterday, gloating over me.  Do you know what he claims?  That I am not a Bransford; that I am merely an adopted daughter—­not even a legally adopted one; that father just took me, when I was a year old, without going through any legal formalities.

“Dale claims to have proof of that.  He won’t tell me where he got it.  He has some sort of trumped-up evidence, I suppose, or he would not have talked so confidently.  And he is all-powerful in the basin.  He is friendly with all the big politicians in the territory, and is ruthless and merciless.  I feel that he would have succeeded, if you had not come.

“I know what he wants; he wants the Double A on account of the water.  He is prepared to go any length to get it—­to commit murder, if necessary.  He could take it away from me, for I wouldn’t know how to fight him.  But he can’t take it away from you, Will.  And he can’t say you have no claim to the Double A, for father willed it to you, and the will has been recorded in the Probate Court in Las Vegas!

“O Will; I am so glad you came,” she went on, stroking and patting his arms.  “When I spoke to you the first time, out there by the stable, I was certain of you, though I dreaded to have you speak for fear you would say otherwise.  And if it hadn’t been you, I believe I should have died.”

“An’ if you’d find out, now, that I ain’t Will Bransford,” said Sanderson slowly, “what then?”

“That can’t be,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes, and holding his gaze for a long time, while she searched his face for signs of that playful deceit that she expected to see reflected there.

She saw it, evidently, or what was certainly an excellent counterfeit of it—­though Sanderson was in no jocular mood, for at that moment he felt himself being drawn further and further into the meshes of the trap he had laid for himself—­and she smiled trustfully at him, drawing a deep sigh of satisfaction and laying her head against his shoulder.