“Let’s go on,” she said, loosening her rein.

“Why not cut back in a semicircle toward The Corner?”

“Toward The Corner?  No, no!”

There was a brightening of his eye as he noted her shudder of distaste or fear, and she strove to cover her traces.

“I’m sick of the place,” she said eagerly.  “Let’s get as far from it as we may.”

“But yonder is a very good trail leading past it.”

“Of course we’ll ride that way if you wish, but I’d rather go straight ahead.”

If she had insisted stubbornly he would have thought nothing, but the moment she became politic he was on his guard.

“You dislike something in The Corner,” he said, thinking carelessly and aloud.  “You are afraid of something back there.  But what could you be afraid of?  Then you may be afraid of something for me.  Ah, I have it!  They have decided to ‘get’ me for taking Jack Landis away; Joe Rix and the Pedlar are waiting for me to come back!”

He looked steadily and she attempted to laugh.

“Joe Rix and the Pedlar?  I would not stack ten like them against you!”

“Then it is someone else.”

“I haven’t said so.  Of course there’s no one.”

She shook her rein again, but Donnegan sat still in his saddle and looked fixedly at her.

“That’s why you brought me out here,” he announced.  “Oh, Nelly Lebrun, what’s behind your mind?  Who is it?  By heaven, it’s this Lord Nick!”

“Mr. Donnegan, you’re letting your imagination run wild.”

“It’s gone straight to the point.  But I’m not angry.  I think I may get back in time.”

He turned his horse, and the girl swung hers beside him and caught his arm.

“Don’t go!” she pleaded.  “You’re right; it’s Nick, and it’s suicide to face him!”

The face of Donnegan set cruelly.

“The main obstacle,” he said.  “Come and watch me handle it!”

But she dropped her head and buried her face in her hands, and, sitting there for a long time, she heard his careless whistling blow back to her as he galloped toward The Corner.

31

If Nelly Lebrun had consigned him mentally to the worms, that thought made not the slightest impression upon Donnegan.  A chance for action was opening before him, and above all a chance of action in the eye of Lou Macon; and he welcomed with open arms the thought that he would have an opportunity to strike for her, and keep Landis with her.  He went arrowy straight and arrowy fast to the cabin on the hill, and he found ample evidence that it had become a center of attention in The Corner.  There was a scattering of people in the distance, apparently loitering with no particular purpose, but undoubtedly because they awaited an explosion of some sort.  He went by a group at which the chestnut shied, and as Donnegan straightened out the horse again he caught a look of both interest and pity on the faces of the men.