demanded.

"Hit's my confession--all wrote out ... an' ready ter be swore ter," she
told him. "Ef ye won't heed me, I've got ter give hit ter ther jedge--in
open co'te."

But the man who gave orders to judges shook his head.

"Hit won't avail ye," he assured her with a voice into which the flinty
quality had returned. "Hit's jest evidence in Ken's favour.... Hit don't
jedgmatically sottle nothin'. I reckon bein' a woman ye figgers ye kin
come cl'ar whilst Ken would be shore ter hang--but I'll see thet nothin'
don't come of thet."

"Does ye mean"--Sally was already so ghost pale that she could not turn
paler--"Does ye mean they'll go on an' hang him anyhow?"

Will Turk's head came back and his shoulders straightened.

"Mayhap they will--ef I bids 'em to," he retorted.

"Listen at me, Will," the woman cried out in such an anguish of
beseeching that even her present auditor could not escape the need of
obeying. "Listen at me because ye knows in yore heart I hain't lyin'.
I'm tellin' ther whole truth thet I was afeared ter tell afore. I let
him take ther blame because I was skeered--an' because ther baby was
goin' ter be borned. I hain't nuver been no liar, Will, an' I hain't one
now!"

The man had half turned his back as if in final denial of her plea, yet
now, after a momentary pause, he turned back again and she thought that
there was something like a glimmer of relenting back of his gruffness as
he gave curt permission: "Go on, then, I'm hearkenin'."

Late into that night they talked, but it was the woman who said most
while the man listened in non-committal taciturnity. His memory flashed
disturbingly back to the boyhood days and testified for the supplicant
with reminders of occasional outcroppings of cruelty in his brother as a
child. That outward guise of suavity which men had known in John Turk he
knew for a coat under which had been worn another and harsher garment of
self-will.

But against these admissions the countryside dictator doggedly stiffened
his resistance. His brother had been killed and the stage was set for
reprisal. His moment was at hand and it was not to be lightly forfeited.

Yet to take vengeance on an innocent scapegoat would bring no true
appeasement to the deep bruise of outraged loyalty. If Ken Thornton had
assumed a guilt, not his own, to protect a woman, he had no quarrel with
Ken Thornton, and he could not forget that until that day of the
shooting this man had been his frien