thoughts were not of the dead man back there, but of the live years that she was to bury with him: years that would never pass beyond her ken, that would never die. He had loved her in his wild, ruthless way. He had left her times without number in the years gone by, but he had always come back, gaily unchastened, to remould the love that waited with dog-like fidelity for the touch of his cunning hand. But he had taken his last flight. He would not come back again. It was all over. Once too often he had tried his reckless wings. She would not have to forgive him again. Uppermost in her mind was the curiously restful thought that his troubles were over, and with them her own. A hand less forgiving than hers had struck him dead.
Somehow, she envied the woman to whom that hand belonged. It had been her divine right to kill, and yet another took it from her.
Back there at the inn she had said to the astonished sheriff:
"Poor thing, if she can escape punishment for this, let it be so. I shall not help the law to kill her simply because she took it in her own hands to pay that man what she owed him. I shall not be the one to say that he did not deserve death at her hands, whoever she may be. No, I shall offer no reward. If you catch her, I shall be sorry for her, Mr. Sheriff. Believe me, I bear her no grudge."
"But she robbed him," the sheriff had cried.
"From my point of view, Mr. Sheriff, that hasn't anything to do with the case," was her significant reply.
"Of course, I am not defending HIM."
"Nor am I defending her," she had retorted. "It would appear that she is able to defend herself."
Now, on the cold, trackless road, she was saying to herself that she did have a grudge against the woman who had destroyed the life that belonged to her, who had killed the thing that was hers to kill. She could not mourn for him. She could only wonder what the poor, hunted terrified creature would do when taken and made to pay for the thing she had done.
Once, in the course of her bitter reflections, she spoke aloud in a shrill, tense voice, forgetful of the presence of the man beside her:
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