“Well, I wonder!” muttered Cartwright.

“I’m sure of it, Jude.  Do you think a deputy will let himself be killed simply to keep a prisoner safely?  They won’t do it!”

“You don’t know this Kern!”

“I do know him, and I know that he’s human.  I’ve seen him beaten once already.”

“By Sinclair!  You keep coming back to him!”

“Jude, if you do this thing for me,” she said steadily, “I’ll go back with you.  I don’t love you, but if I go back I’ll keep you from a great deal of shameful talk.  I’m sorry, truly, that I left.  I couldn’t help it.  It was an impulse that—­took me by the throat.  And if I go back I’ll honestly try to make you a good wife.”

She faltered a little before that last word, and her voice fell.  But Jude Cartwright was wholly fascinated by the color in her face, and the softness of her voice he mistook for a sudden rise of tenderness.

“They’s only one thing I got to ask—­you and Sinclair—­have you ever—­I mean—­have you ever told him you’re pretty fond of him—­that you love him?” He blurted it out, stammering.

Certainly she knew that her answer was a lie, though it was true in the letter.

“I have never told him so,” she said firmly.  “But I owe him a great debt—­he must not die because he’s a gentleman, Jude.”

All the time she was speaking, he watched her with ferret sharpness, thinking busily.  Before she ended he had reached his decision.

“I’m going to raise that mob.”

“Jude!”

What a ring in her voice!  If he had been in doubt he would have known then.  No matter what she said, she loved Riley Sinclair.  He smiled sourly down on her.

“Keep your thanks.  You’ll hear news of Sinclair before morning.”  And he stalked out of the room.

33

Cartwright went downstairs in the highest good humor.  He had been convinced of two things in the interview with his wife:  The first was that she could be induced to return to him; the second was that she loved Riley Sinclair.  He did not hate her for such fickleness.  He merely despised her for her lack of brains.  No thinking woman could hesitate a moment between the ranches and the lumber tracts of Cartwright and the empty purse of Riley Sinclair.

As for hatred, that he concentrated on the head of Sinclair himself.  He had already excellent reasons for hating the rangy cowpuncher.  Those reasons were now intensified and given weight by what he had recently learned.  He determined to raise a mob, but not to accomplish his wife’s desires.  What she had said about the weakness of jails, the strength of Sinclair, and the probability that once out he would take the trail of the rancher, appealed vigorously to his imagination.  He did not dream that such a man as Sinclair would hesitate at a killing.  And, loving the girl, the first thing Sinclair would do would be to remove the obstacle through the simple expedient of a well-placed bullet.