When she was held, for others were forced to go to their comrade’s aid, she stood panting and glaring at Snaky Pete, who had not said a word, but stared at her with wide eyes that hardly blinked. “Jane Clayton!” he gasped. “I thought----” “You thought I’d be too much of a woman, and too big a coward to----” “I thought you was dead,” he said; “I was told it, and I----” “Hoped I was, eh? Well, I ain’t! I’m alive enough to make things warm fer ye, and I’m here to do it. Leggo of me!” This last was directed to the men who clung to her. “Leggo of me!” she screeched at them, flinging herself to and fro. “Search her and see if she’s got other weapons,” said Snaky Pete. The men had been astounded on hearing her words to him; the whole thing was to them strange and mysterious. They searched her, but not very thoroughly. “Now, what aire you doin’ here?” Snaky Pete demanded of her. “You was with that man!” “Yes, with a man callin’ hisself Buffler Bill, though I don’t know if he tole the truth about it. What of it? He was huntin’ outlaws, he said; and so was I. And we j’ined teams, each to help the other. I jedge, by the way you tried to git him, that he’s the ginuine Buffler. And may the Lord speed him in runnin’ away from ye!” “I s’pose you know that you’ve run yerself into a good deal of danger by yer foolishness?” said Snaky Pete. “If we’ll let you go in the mornin’, and give ye a horse, will you cut out fer the town?” “Will I? Not till I git through with you!” “Then we’ll send you under escort; and if you won’t go no other way, we’ll tie you to a horse and make you go.” “Pete Sanborn,” she said, scorn in her voice, “of all the mean, low-down cowards on this earth, you’re the wust! You’re afeard o’ me, and you’d better be. Oh, I kin tell these gapin’, white-livered wretches with ye that I know you. And why shouldn’t I, sense I was yer wife fer more’n two years, and had a chance to know how beastly mean a man kin be when he gits down and tries? I come huntin’ ye, fer one thing; and I’ve found ye.” Snaky Pete seemed afraid of her. “Shut up!” he said; but she cackled defiantly. “I won’t! I’m goin’ to tell these men what a coward ye aire. You remember that time you knocked the drunk man down in the street, and then drug him into an alley and robbed him? And do ye recklect that other time, when you stole the gold altar service from a church, and melted it down and sold it? And do you recall that other time, when----” “Close your head!” he shouted. He sprang at her, wild-eyed and fiendish; but she clawed him in the face, and he fell back. “Take her away!” he commanded. “Kill her--do anything! Take her away!” The men dragged her away, while she screamed and raved her hatred of the man who had once been her husband. Snaky Pete tried to turn the incident aside as a jest.