rough. It
was a living death. And he would have died, there is no doubt of it, if
it hadn't been for a stranger who came along. He was a white man.
Marette, it doesn't take a great deal of nerve to go up against a man
with a gun, when you've got a gun of your own; and it doesn't take such
a lot of nerve to go into battle when a thousand others are going with
you. But it does take nerve to face what that stranger faced. And the
sick man was nothing to him. He went into that tent and nursed the
other back to life. Then the sickness got him, and for ten weeks those
two were together, each fighting to save the other's life, and they won
out. But the glory of it was with the stranger. He was going west. The
constable was going south. They shook hands and parted."

Marette's fingers tightened on Kent's arm. And Kent went on.

"And the constable never forgot, Gray Goose. He wanted the day to come
when he might repay. And the time came. It was years later, and it
worked out in a curious way. A man was murdered. And the constable, who
had become a sergeant now, had talked with the dead man only a little
while before he was killed. Returning for something he had forgotten,
it was the sergeant who found him dead. Very shortly afterward a man
was arrested. There was blood on his clothing. The evidence was
convincing, deadly. And this man--"

Kent paused, and in the darkness Marette's hand crept down his arm to
his hand, and her fingers closed round it.

"Was the man you lied to save," she whispered.

"Yes. When the halfbreed's bullet got me, I thought it was a good
chance to repay Sandy McTrigger for what he did for me in that tent
years before. But it wasn't heroic. It wasn't even brave. I thought I
was going to die and that I was risking nothing."

And then there came a soft, joyous little laugh from where her head lay
on the pillow. "And all the time you were lying so splendidly, Jeems--I
KNEW," she cried. "I knew that you didn't kill Barkley, and I knew that
you weren't going to die, and I knew what happened in that tent ten
years ago. And--Jeems--Jeems--"

She raised herself from the pillow. Her breath was coming a little
excitedly. Both her hands, instead of one, were gripping his hand now.
"I knew that you didn't kill John Barkley," she repeated. "And--SANDY
MCTRIGGER DIDN'T KILL HIM!"

"But--"

"He DIDN'T," she interrupted him, almost fiercely. "He was innocent, as
innocent as you were. Jeems--I Jeems--I know who