Page:MacLeod Raine - The Sheriff's Son.djvu/311

 "I 'll tell you what's to prevent you," she flung back, as it were in a kind of careless scorn. "Your fondness for your worthless hide. If they find me shot to death, they will know who did it. You could n't hide deep enough in Chihuahua to escape them. My father would never rest till he had made an end of you."

Her argument sounded appallingly reasonable to him. He knew the Rutherfords. They would make him pay his debt to them with usury.

To stimulate his mind he took another drink, after which he stared down at her a long time in sullen, sulky silence. She managed at the same time to irritate him and tempt him and fill his coward heart with fear of consequences. Through the back of his brain from the first there had been filtering thoughts that were like crouching demons. They reached toward her and drew back in alarm. He was too white-livered to go through with his villainy boldly.

He recorked the bottle and put it in his hip pocket. "’Nough said," he blustered. "Me, I 'll git on my hawss and be joggin' along to Mex. I 'll take chances on their finding you before you 're starved. After that it won't matter to me when they light on yore body."