Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/306

 sudden passion, rising from the wreckage of her life to this one last defense.

"There's the man," said Findlay, pointing with his pistol, "that sent me out to steal my first unbranded calf."

"What a cruel lie!" said Mrs. Nearing, her pale face suddenly aflame.

"There is the man," Findlay went on with his arraignment unmoved, "who would have betrayed me and double-crossed me, years after my cattle rustlin' under his able direction had made him rich, if I hadn't got something on him that put a padlock on his jaw."

Nearing was lifting himself up in his bed, his arms behind him, weak props in the current fast cutting away the sands of his life. Terrible he leaned there, like a convicted man come before the bar to hear the sentence of his death. His wife, waiting Findlay's words, did not see him; Alma, in helpless anguish between the force of condemnation and the slow-moving, merciless stroke of death, stared with horror on the grisly man who rose slowly and leaned so, waiting, waiting, in the shadow of the disgrace he had stayed so long.

"I promised him then I'd make him pay for his treason, for his attempt to sacrifice me to make himself safe. I promised him I'd cut him to the bone, I'd take the best he had, and then I'd put my heel down on him and mash him like a centipede. I lost the one thing I wanted most—if that damn' monkey-legged sailor had been a minute later—but that's all off. It wasn't the young Englishman up in Eagle Rock Can-