“You knew it couldn’t have been you, for he wasn’t struck with a revolver.  It couldn’t have been dad, since he had his shotgun loaded with buckshot.”

“What difference did it make?” he wanted to know impatiently.  “Say I’d have explained till kingdom come that I borrowed the rifle from a friend five minutes after Faulkner was hit—­ would anybody have believed me?  Would it have made a bit of difference?”

Her shining eyes were more eloquent than a thousand tongues.  “I don’t say it would, but there was always the chance.  You didn’t take it.  You would have let them hang you, without speaking the word that brought me into it.  Why?”

“I’m awful obstinate when I get my back up,” he smiled.

“That wasn’t it.  You did it to save a girl you had never seen but once.  I want to know why.”

“All right.  Have it your own way.  But don’t ask me to explain the whyfors.  I’m no Harvard professor.”

“I know,” she said softly.  She was not looking at him, but out of the window, and there were tears in her voice.

“Sho!  Don’t make too much of it.  We’ll let it go that I ain’t all coyote, after all.  But that don’t entitle me to any reward of merit.  Now, don’t you cry, Miss Arlie.  Don’t you.”

She choked back the tears, and spoke in deep self-scorn.  “No!  You don’t deserve anything except what you’ve been getting from me—­ suspicion and distrust and hard words!  You haven’t done anything worth speaking of—­ just broke into a quarrel that wasn’t yours, at the risk of your life; then took it on your shoulders to let us escape; and, afterward, when you were captured, refused to drag me in, because I happen to be a girl!  But it’s not worth mentioning that you did all this for strangers, and that later you did not tell even me, because you knew it would trouble me that I had killed him, though in self-defense.  And to think that all the time I’ve been full of hateful suspicions about you!  Oh, you don’t know how I despise myself!”

She let her head fall upon her arm on the table, and sobbed.

Fraser, greatly disturbed, patted gently the heavy coil of blue-black hair.

“Now, don’t you, Arlie; don’t you.  I ain’t worth it.  Honest, I ain’t.  I did what it was up to me to do.  Not a thing more.  Dick would have done it.  Any of the boys would.  Now, let’s look at what you’ve done for me.”

From under the arm a muffled voice insisted she had done nothing but suspect him.

“Hold on, girl.  Play fair.  First off you ride sixty miles to help me when I’m hunted right hard.  You bring me to your home in this valley where strangers ain’t over and above welcome just now.  You learn I’m an officer and still you look out for me and fight for me, till you make friends for me.  It’s through you I get started right with the boys.  On your say-so they give me the glad hand.  You learn I’ve lied to you, and two or three hours later you save my life.  You sit there steady, with my haid in your lap, while some one is plugging away at us.  You get me to a house, take care of my wounds, and hold the fort alone in the night till help comes.  Not only that, but you drive my enemy away.  Later, you bring me home, and nurse me like I was a long-lost brother.  What I did for you ain’t in the same class with what you’ve done for me.”