"He stood a minute in front of me, looking all around before he spoke.
His horse was breathing pretty heavy; the snow blowing pretty bad.
After a while he loosened the quirt from his saddle and looked at me:
'Damn you,' he said, 'you were bound to come. All hell couldn't keep
you back, could it? Now it's come in earnest for you. You're goin'
over the pass with me. Get up out of that snow.'

"I could hear him, but I couldn't move hand or foot. And I never
dreamed what was going to happen till he laid the quirt across my face
like a knife.

"All I ever hoped for was to get up so I could live long enough to kill
him. He gave me that quirt till I was insane with rage; long afterward
he told me my eyes turned green. I cursed him. He asked me whether
I'd get up. I knew, if I didn't, I'd have to take more. I dragged
myself out of the snow again and pitched and struggled after him--to
the top of the pass.

"Then he put me on his pony--we got the wind worse up there. Abe had a
little shack a way down the pass, rigged up for storm trouble. But the
pony quit before we got to the shack, and when the pony fell down, my
hands and feet were no use. Abe carried and dragged and rolled me down
into the shack. I was asleep. There was always a fire left laid in
the stove. Abe had a hard time to light it. But he got it lighted and
when he fell down he laid both hands on the stove--so when they began
to burn it would wake him up; if the fire didn't burn he didn't want to
wake up. The marks of that fire are on his hands right in that room
there now, tonight. He saved my hands and feet. He stayed with me
while I was crazy and got me safe to Horsehead.

"Do you suppose I could ever live long enough to turn that man,
wounded, over to an enemy? He didn't ask me for any shelter after Van
Horn's raid. All he ever asked me for was cartridges--and he got 'em.
He'd get anything I had, and all I had, as long as there was a breath
left in my body, and he asked within reason. And Abe Hawk wouldn't ask
anything more."

Kate rose from her chair: "I've a great deal to learn about people and
things in this country," she said slowly. "Not all pleasant things,"
she added. "I suppose some unpleasant things have to be. Anyway, I'll
ride home tonight better satisfied for coming in."

"You going home?" he asked.

She was moving toward the door: "I only hope," she exclaimed, "this
fighting is over."

"That doesn't rest in my han