"That was all she meant to tell me, but I was bound to get all she
knew. And I got it, but I want to tell you right now, boys, that I had
a hell of a time gettin' it. Every time I got a new thing out of her
she'd make me get down on my knees and kiss the crucifix and swear by
a dozen fresh saints that I wouldn't tell anybody but Don Emerson, and
that he wouldn't tell anybody else, and that nothin' should happen to
Don Will because she had told it.

"She finally admitted that she and Will Whittaker had been secretly
married away last spring and had never said a word about it to
anybody. By that time I felt pretty sure that it was Mr. Will himself
who had made a killin', and I sprung my suspicion on her and
threatened her with the _padre_ and swore a lot of things by a whole
heap of fresh saints, and she finally told me just what had happened.

"It seems that a cousin of hers--one of their everlastin' _primos_ in
the sixty-third degree, I reckon--came up from down along the line
somewheres, and she was so glad to see him and he was so glad to see
her that he hugged her and stooped over to kiss her--I reckon likely
she'd been flirtin' her eyes and her shoulders at him--when bang!
bang! bang! and he dropped dead at her feet and there was _esposo_
Will in the door, mad with jealousy and ready to kill her too. Say,
boys!" Nick stopped short, the stream of his narrative interrupted by
a certain memory. "Say, that was what it was!" And he slapped his
thigh with delight at having solved a mystery. "That's the reason she
had such fantods when I wanted to kiss her that day last summer! It
was just because she happened to remember this other time!"

The others smiled and chuckled and Mead said: "You know I told you
then, Nick, it wasn't because she didn't like your looks!"

"Well, he was ready to kill her, too, but she threw herself on him and
begged for her life and swore the man was her cousin and there was no
harm, and presently Will's companion came runnin' in and they got the
young man cooled off. He and the other man talked together a little
while and then they put Will's clothes on the corpse and Will dressed
himself in the dead man's and they took the dead body away in the
wagon, and Amada washed up all the blood stains and never let a soul
know what had happened, because Will told her if she did her father
would sure have him arrested and hung. And he made her swear to be a
faithful wife to him and promised to send for