Page:MacLeod Raine - The Sheriff's Son.djvu/336

 yourself you 've noticed it. Probably everybody that knows me has."

"I did n't say that." Her dark eyes challenged his very steadily. "What I said was that you have too much imagination to rush into danger recklessly. You picture it all out vividly beforehand and it worries you. Is n't that the way of it?"

He nodded, ashamed.

"But when the time comes, nobody could be braver than you," she went on. "You 've been tried out a dozen times in the last three months. You have always made good."

"Made good! If you only knew!" he answered bitterly.

"Knew what? I saw you down at Hart's when Dan Meldrum ordered you to kneel and beg. But you gamed it out, though you knew he meant to kill you."

He flushed beneath the tan. "I was too paralyzed to move. That's the simple truth."

"Were you too paralyzed to move down at the arcade of the Silver Dollar?" she flashed at him.

"It was the drink in me. I was n't used to it and it went to my head."

"Had you been drinking that time at the