He laughed, his laughter ending with a choked sound.  “And why should I make concessions?”

Jig watched the veins of fury swell in his forehead, watched calmly, and then threw her sombrero on the bed and smoothed back her hair, still watching without a change of expression.  It seemed as if her calm acted to sober him, and the passing of her hand across the bright, silken hair all at once softened him.  He sank into the opposite chair, leaning far across the table toward her.

“Honey, take you all in all, you’re prettier right here in this man’s outfit that I ever see you—­a pile prettier!”

For a moment she closed her eyes.  The sacrifice which she intended was becoming harder, desperately hard to make.

“I’m going to take you back and forgive you,” said Cartwright, apparently blind to what was going on in her mind.  “I ain’t one to carry malice.  You keep to the line from now on, and we’ll get along fine.  But you step crooked just once more, and I’ll learn you a pile of things you never even dreamed could happen!”

To her it seemed that he stood in a shaft of consuming light that exposed every shadowy nook and cranny of his nature, and the narrow-minded meanness that she saw, startled her.

“What you do afterward with me is your own affair,” she said.  “It’s about the present that I’ve come to bargain.”

“Bargain?”

“Exactly!  Do what I ask, and I go back and act as your wife.  If you refuse, I walk out of your life forever.”

He could not speak for a moment.  Then he exploded.

“It’s funny.  I could almost laugh hearing you chatter crazy like this.  Don’t you think I got a right to make my own wife come home with me, now that I’ve found her?  Wouldn’t the law stand behind me?”

“You can force me to come,” she admitted quietly, “but if you do, I’ll let the whole truth be known that I ran away from you.  Can your pride stand that, Jude?”

He writhed.  “And how’ll you get around that, even if I don’t make you, and you come back of your own free will?”

“Somehow I’ll manage.  I’ll find a story of how I was carried away by half a dozen men who had come to loot the upper rooms of the house, while the wedding party was downstairs.  I’ll find a story that will wash.”

“Yes, I think you will,” said Cartwright, breathing heavily.  “I sure think you will.  You was always a clever little devil, I know!  But a bargain!  I’d ought to—­” He checked himself.  “But I’m through with the black talk.  When I get you back on the ranch I’ll show you that you can be happy up there.  And when you get over your fool notions, you’ll be a wife to be proud of.  Now, honey, tell me what you want?”

“I want you to save the lives of two men.  They’re both in jail—­on my account.  And they’re both charged with murder.  You know whom I mean.”

Cartwright rose out of his chair.

“Sinclair!” he groaned.  “Curse him!  Sinclair, ag’in, eh?  What’s they between you two?”