The finality of it appalled her. She felt as if she were butting her head against a stone wall. She knew that argument and entreaty were of no avail, yet she desperately besought first one and then another of them to save the prisoner. Each in turn shook his head. She could see that none of them, save Rosario, bore him a grudge; yet none would move to break the valley oath. At the last, she was through with her promises and her prayers. She had spent them all, and had come up against the wall of blank despair. Then Jack's grave smile thanked her. "You've done what you could, Melissy." She clung to him wildly. "Oh, no--no! I can't let you go, Jack. I can't. I can't." "I reckon it's got to be, dear," he told her gently. But her breaking heart could not stand that. There must somehow be a way to save him. She cast about desperately for one, and had not found it when she begged the outlaw chief to see her alone. "No use." He shook his head. "But just for five minutes! That can't do any harm, can it?" "And no good, either." "Yet I ask it. You might do that much for me," she pleaded. Her despair had moved him; for he was human, after all. That he was troubled about it annoyed him a good deal. Her arrival on the scene had made things unpleasant for everybody. Ungraciously he assented, as the easiest way out of the difficulty. The two moved off to the corral. It was perhaps thirty yards distant, and they reached it before either of them spoke. She was the first to break the silence. [Illustration: "OH, NO--NO! I CAN'T LET YOU GO, JACK. I CAN'T. I CAN'T." _Page 294._] "You won't do this dreadful thing--surely, you won't do it." "No use saying another word about it. I told you that," he answered doggedly. "But---- Oh, don't you see? It's one of those things no white man can do. Once it's done, you have put the bars up against decency for the rest of your life." "I reckon I'll have to risk that--and down in your heart you don't believe it, because you think I've had the bars up for years." She had come to an impasse already. She tried another turn. "And you said you cared for me! Yet you are willing to make me unhappy for the rest of my life." "Why, no! I'm willing to make you happy. There's fish in the sea just as good as any that ever were caught," he smirked. "But it would help you to free him. Don't you see? It's your chance. You can begin again, now. You can make him your friend." His eyes were hard and grim. "I don't want him for a friend, and you're dead wrong if you think I could make this a lever to square myself with the law. I couldn't. He wouldn't let me, for one thing--he isn't that kind." "And you said you cared for me!" she repeated helplessly, wringing her hands in her despair. "But at the first chance you fail me." "Can't you see it isn't a personal matter? I've got nothing against him--nothing to speak of. I'd give him to you, if I could. But it's not my say-so. The thing is out of my hands."