For a moment Sinclair had to fight with himself for control.  All his murderous evil temper had flared up into his brain and set his teeth gritting.  At length he could trust himself enough to reach down and set his heavy grip on the shoulder of the sleeper.

Even in sleep Jig must have been pursued by a burdened consciousness of guilt.  Now he jerked up his head and stammered up to the shadowy face of Sinclair.

“I—­I don’t know—­all at once it happened.  You see the fire—­”

But the telltale odor of the charring meat struck his nostrils, and his speech died away.  He was panting with fear of consequences.  Now a new turn came to the fear of Cold Feet.  It seemed that Riley Sinclair’s hand had frozen at the touch of the soft flesh of Jig’s shoulder.  He remained for a long moment without stirring.  When his hand moved it was to take Jig under the chin with marvelous firmness and gentleness at once and lift the face of the schoolteacher.  He seemed to find much to read there, much to study and know.  Whatever it was, it set Jig trembling until suddenly he shrank away, cowering against the rock behind.

“You don’t think—­”

But the voice of Sinclair broke in with a note in it that Jig had never heard before.

“Guns and glory—­a woman!”

It came over him with a rush, that revelation which explained so many things—­everything in fact; all that strange cowardice, and all that stranger grace; that unmanly shrinking, that more than manly contempt for death.  Now the firelight was too feeble to show more than one thing—­the haunted eyes of the girl, as she cowered away from him.

He saw her hand drop from her breast to her holster and close around the butt of her revolver.

Sinclair grew cold and sick.  After all, what reason had she to trust him?  He drew back and began to walk up and down with long, slow strides.  The girl followed him and saw his gaunt figure brush across the stars; she saw the wind furl and unfurl the wide brim of his hat, and she heard the faint stir and clink of his spurs at every step.

There was a tumult in the brain of the cowpuncher.  The stars and the sky and the mountains and wind went out.  They were nothing in the electric presence of this new Jig.  His mind flashed back to one picture—­Cold Feet with her hands tied behind her back, praying under the cottonwood.

Shame turned the cowpuncher hot and then cold.  He allowed his mind to drift back over his thousand insults, his brutal language, his cursing, his mockery, his open contempt.  There was a tingle in his ears, and a chill running up and down his spine.

After all that brutality, what mysterious sense had told her to trust to him rather than to Sour Creek and its men?

Other mysteries flocked into his mind.  Why had she come to the very verge of death, with the rope around her neck rather than reveal her identity, knowing, as she must know, that in the mountain desert men feel some touch of holiness in every woman?