e didn't give them a show,
that he just turned his rifle on them and killed them before he knew
whether they were going to shoot or not!"

"Well, they lie," said Violet, with the calmness of conviction.

"I suppose he had a right to do what he did, but he doesn't seem like
the same man to me now. I feel like I'd lost something--some friendship
that I valued, I mean, Violet--you know what I mean."

"I know as well as anything," said Violet, smiling to herself, head
turned away, the moonlight on her good, kind face.

"I feel like somebody had died, and that he--they--that he----"

"And you ought to be thankful it isn't so!" said Violet, sharply, "but I
don't believe you are."

"I never want to see him again, I'll always think of him standing there
with that terrible gun in his hands, those dead men around him on the
floor!"

"You may have to go to him on your knees yet, and I hope to God you will
Rhetta Thayer!" Violet said.

"If you'd seen somebody--somebody that you--that was--if you'd seen him
like I saw him, you wouldn't blame me so," Rhetta defended, beginning
again to cry, and bend her head upon her hands and moan like a mother
who had lost a child.

Violet was moved out of her harshness at once. She put her arm around
the weeping girl, whose sorrow was too genuine to admit a doubt of its
great depth, and consoled her with soft words.

"And he looked so big to me, and he was so _clean_, before that," Rhetta
wailed.

"He's bigger than ever, he's as blameless as a lamb," said Violet.
"After a little while you'll see it different, he'll be the same to
you."

"I couldn't touch his hand!" said Rhetta, shuddering at the thought.

"Never mind," said Violet, soothingly; "never mind."

Violet said no more, but took Rhetta by the hand, and it was wet with
tears from her streaming cheeks. There was peace in the night around
them, for all the turmoil there might be in human hearts, for night had
eased the throbbing, drouth-cursed earth of its burning, and called the
trumpeters of the greenery out along the riverside.

"I'm afraid he'll come," said Rhetta by and by.

"Why should he come?" asked Violet, stroking back the other's hair.

"He's got one of your horses--I'm afraid he'll come to bring it home."

"You only hope he will," said Violet, in her assured, calm way.

"Violet!" But there was not so much chiding in the word as a cry of
pain, a confession of despair. He would not come; and she knew he would