Page:Owen Wister - The Virginian.djvu/481

Rh took his strong hand in hers, tremulously, so much of it as her little hand could hold. "I know something about that—that—last autumn," she said, shrinking from words more definite. "And I know that you only did—"

"What I had to," he finished, very sadly, but sternly, too.

"Yes," she asserted, keeping hold of his hand. "I suppose that—lynching—" (she almost whispered the word) "is the only way. But when they had to die just for stealing horses, it seems so wicked that this murderer—"

"Who can prove it?" asked the Virginian.

"But don't you know it?"

"I know a heap o' things inside my heart. But that's not proving. There was only the body, and the hoofprints—and what folks guessed."

"He was never even arrested!" the girl said.

"No. He helped elect the sheriff in that county."

Then Molly ventured a step inside the border of her lover's reticence. "I saw—" she hesitated, "just now, I saw what you did."

He returned to his caressing irony. "You'll have me plumb scared if you keep on seein' things."

"You had your pistol ready for him."

"Why, I believe I did. It was mighty unnecessary." And the Virginian took out the pistol again, and shook his head over it, like one who has been caught in a blunder.

She looked at him, and knew that she must step outside his reticence again. By love and her surrender to him their positions had been exchanged.