She knew he was speaking the thoughts that had been drifting through his mind in whiskey-lit ruminations.  That he was a wanton killer she had always heard.  If he could persuade himself it could be done with safety, he would not hesitate to make an end of her.

This was the sort of danger she could fight against—­and she did.

“I’ll tell you what’s to prevent you,” she flung back, as it were in a kind of careless scorn.  “Your fondness for your worthless hide.  If they find me shot to death, they will know who did it.  You couldn’t hide deep enough in Chihuahua to escape them.  My father would never rest till he had made an end of you.”

Her argument sounded appallingly reasonable to him.  He knew the Rutherfords.  They would make him pay his debt to them with usury.

To stimulate his mind he took another drink, after which he stared down at her a long time in sullen, sulky silence.  She managed at the same time to irritate him and tempt him and fill his coward heart with fear of consequences.  Through the back of his brain from the first there had been filtering thoughts that were like crouching demons.  They reached toward her and drew back in alarm.  He was too white-livered to go through with his villainy boldly.

He recorked the bottle and put it in his hip pocket. “’Nough said,” he blustered.  “Me, I’ll git on my hawss and be joggin’ along to Mex.  I’ll take chances on their finding you before you’re starved.  After that it won’t matter to me when they light on yore body.”

“Oh, yes, it will,” she corrected him promptly, “I’m going to write a note and tell just what has happened.  It will be found beside me in case they . . . don’t reach here in time.”

The veins in his blotched face stood out as he glared down at her while he adjusted himself to this latest threat.  Here, too, she had him.  He had gone too far.  Dead or alive, she was a menace to his safety.

Since he must take a chance, why not take a bigger one, why not follow the instigation of the little crouching devils in his brain?  He leered down at her with what was meant to be an ingratiating smile.

“Sho!  What’s the use of we ’uns quarreling, Miss Beulah?  I ain’t got nothing against you.  Old Dan he always liked you fine.  I reckon you didn’t know that, did you?”

Her quick glance was in time to catch his face napping.  The keen eyes of the girl pounced on his and dragged from them a glimpse of the depraved soul of the ruffian.  Silently and warily she watched him.

“I done had my little joke, my dear,” he went on.  “Now we’ll be heap good friends.  Old Dan ain’t such a bad sort.  There’s lots of folks worse than Dan.  That’s right.  Now, what was that you said a while ago about giving me anything I wanted?”

“I said my father would pay you anything in reason.”  Her throat was parched, but her eyes were hard and bright.  No lithe young panther of the forest could have been more alert than she.