He put the word off by itself.  Then he was surprised to hear her laughing softly.  Now that he knew, it was all woman, that voice.

“It wasn’t really courage, Riley.  After you’d said half a dozen words I knew you were square, and that you knew I was innocent.  So I didn’t worry very much—­except just after you’d sentenced me to hang!”

“Don’t go back to that!  I sure been a plumb fool.  But why would you have gone ahead and let that hanging happen?”

“Because I had rather die than be known, except to you.”

“You leave me out.”

“I’d trust you to the end of everything, Riley.”

“I b’lieve you would, Jig—­I honest believe you would!  Heaven knows why.”

“Because.”

“That ain’t a reason.”

“A very good woman’s reason.  For one thing you’ve let me come along when you know that I’m a weight, and you’re in danger.  But you don’t know what it means if I go back.  You can’t know.  I know it’s wrong and cowardly for me to stay and imperil you, but I am a coward, and I’m afraid to go back!”

“Hush up,” murmured Sinclair.  “Hush up, girl.  Is they anybody asking you to go back?  But you don’t really figure on hanging out here with me in the mountains, me having most of the gents in these parts out looking for my scalp?”

“If you think I won’t be such an encumbrance that I’ll greatly endanger you, Riley.”

“H’m,” muttered Sinclair.  “I’ll take that chance, but they’s another thing.”

“Well?”

“It ain’t exactly nacheral and reasonable for a girl to go around in the mountains with a man.”

She fired up at that, sitting straight, with the fire flaring suddenly in her face through the change of position.

“I’ve told you that I trust you, Riley.  What do I care about the opinion of the world?  Haven’t they hounded me?  Oh, I despise them!”

“H’m,” said the cowpuncher again.

He was, indeed, so abashed by this outbreak that he merely stole a glance at her face and then studied the fire again.

“Does this gent Cartwright tie up with your story?”

All the fire left her.  “Yes,” she whispered.

He felt that she was searching his face, as if suddenly in doubt of him.

“Will you let me tell you—­everything?”

“Shoot ahead.”

“Some parts will be hard to believe.”

“Lady, they won’t be nothing as hard to believe as what I’ve seen you do with my own eyes.”

Then she began to tell her story, and she found a vast comfort in seeing the ugly, stern face of Sinclair lighted by the burning end of his cigarette.  He never looked at her, but always fixed his stare on the sea of blackness which was the lower valley.

“All the trouble began with a theory.  My father felt that the thing for a girl was to be educated in the East and marry in the West.  He was full of maxims, you see.  ’They turn out knowledge in cities; they turn out men in mountains,’ was one of his maxims.  He thought and argued and lived along those lines.  So as soon as I was half grown—­oh, I was a wild tomboy!”