“I don’t mean that at all,” she flamed.  “How can you say such a thing about yourself when everybody knows that you’re the bravest man in Washington County?”

“No—­no.  I’m a born trembler.”  From where he stood beyond the fire he looked across at her with dumb anguish in his eyes.  “You say yourself you’ve noticed it.  Probably everybody that knows me has.”

“I didn’t say that.”  Her dark eyes challenged his very steadily.  “What I said was that you have too much imagination to rush into danger recklessly.  You picture it all out vividly beforehand and it worries you.  Isn’t that the way of it?”

He nodded, ashamed.

“But when the time comes, nobody could be braver than you,” she went on.  “You’ve been tried out a dozen times in the last three months.  You have always made good.”

“Made good!  If you only knew!” he answered bitterly.

“Knew what?  I saw you down at Hart’s when Dan Meldrum ordered you to kneel and beg.  But you gamed it out, though you knew he meant to kill you.”

He flushed beneath the tan.  “I was too paralyzed to move.  That’s the simple truth.”

“Were you too paralyzed to move down at the arcade of the Silver Dollar?” she flashed at him.

“It was the drink in me.  I wasn’t used to it and it went to my head.”

“Had you been drinking that time at the depot?” she asked with a touch of friendly irony.

“That wasn’t courage.  If it would have saved me, I would have run like a rabbit.  But there was no chance.  The only hope I had was to throw a fear into him.  But all the time I was sick with terror.”

She rose and walked round the camp-fire to him.  Her eyes were shining with a warm light of admiration.  Both hands went out to him impulsively.

“My friend, that is the only kind of courage really worth having.  That kind you earn.  It is yours because it is born of the spirit.  You have fought for it against the weakness of the flesh and the timidity of your own soul.  Some men are born without sense or imagination.  They don’t know enough to be afraid.  But the man who tramples down a great fear wins his courage by earning it.”  She laughed a little, to make light of her own enthusiasm.  “Oh, I know I’m preaching like a little prig.  But it’s the truth, just the same.”

At the touch of her fingers his pulses throbbed.  But once more he tried to make her understand.

“No, I’ve had luck all the way through.  Do you remember that night at the cabin—­before we went up the canon?”

“Yes.”

“Some one shot at me as I ran into the cabin.  I was so frightened that I piled all the furniture against the door and hid in the cellar.  It was always that way with me.  I used to jump if anybody rode up unexpectedly at the ranch.  Every little thing set my nerves fluttering.”

“But it isn’t so now.”

“No, not so much.”