Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/180

162 He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it again and again.

And for the first time he saw the tears gathering in her dark eyes. "But you fought here, did n't you, Dan?" she asked with painful slowness. "You did n't put up your arms—or try to run away? I did n't come till he had you done, so I did n't see." She looked at him as if her whole joy of life hung on his answer.

"Fought! I would have fought till I died! But that is n't enough, Snowbird. It is n't enough just to fight, in a case like this. A man's got to win! I would have died if you had n't come. And that's another debt that I have to pay—only that debt I owe to you."

She nodded slowly. The lives of the mountain men are not saved by their women without incurring obligation. She attempted no barren denials. She made no effort to pretend he had not incurred a tremendous debt when she had come with her pistol. It was an unavoidable fact. A life for a life is the code of the mountains.

"Two things I must do, before I can ever dare to die," he told her soberly. "One of them is to pay you; the other is to pay Cranston for the thing he said. Maybe the chance will never come for the first of the two; only I 'll