Well,
what's the odds?

"It wasn't you brung me down, Kate. Don't cry like that, dear. It don't
matter. Nothing matters. It was this Brooke which done for me, not you
or Jesse. Brooke's only a thing I took in like a lost dog 'cause he was
hungry. He said he'd manage my business, and he shorely did--invested
all I'd got in a governess, and a bonfire at Mathson's, and a stampede
of mules. Then he fooled a widow down to Ashcroft to start him running a
tourist joint, and I was to be turned out. And he fell in love with you.

"I guess that's all, excep' I got to tell you one thing. It was nursing
the sick men kep' me straight all them years, kep' me from drink. You
see I was meant for a nurse, trained for a nurse until--until--well,
never you mind. Brooke stopped the nursing, and I drank. I'm only a
nurse gone wrong.

"Yes, your eyes is wonderin' why they don't come back with them
bandages, and the bath. Don't worry about that, 'cause I'll be dead by
daybreak. Jesse loved yer. Brooke loved yer, and somehow, well, I'm
kinder ranging that way myself. And if I go, you'll get back Jess, eh?"

Rallying what courage I had left, I knelt down and kissed my sister, my
poor sister. For a moment I let her stroke my carroty hair, which she
liked. Then I ran to hurry my people to bring the beef tea, the hot
water, the bandages. I found that wretched nurse detaining Billy and the
Chinaman, with some pretense that I must not be disturbed. I was telling
her to get out of my sight, to go to her bed, when a revolver-shot rang
through the echoing house.

Polly had crawled to the door-step, found her revolver. She who gave
everything in life, had given me back to Jesse, and lay dead, her
forehead shattered in with the revolver-shot. For some seconds Billy and
I hung back, watching from the doorway while a slow coil of smoke
unfolded in the wan light of the dawn. The rain had ceased, and the
east was all aglow with golden radiance.

Billy knelt and touched the poor broken forehead, then looking up at
me, "This time," he said, "it's real."

EPILOGUE

Once more with Jesse in Cathedral Grove! The breath of evening stirred
its tangled coral, the long needles clustered in globes were swaying as
censors sway, with heavy incense. Beyond the purple night swept up over
glowing cliffs to where the upper forest like an edge of flame burned
against deeps of sky.

"Come to the hilltop: blackbird choristers
Peal their clear anthem