"Like this?" I queried, trying. "Partly. But it's not a sword you're drawing; it's a gun. You may draw laughing, if you wish to dissemble for a sudden drop; they do, when they have iron in their heart and the bullet already on its way, in their mind. I mustn't stay longer. Shall we go to the fire now? I am cold." She shivered. "Daniel is waiting. And when you've delivered me safe you'd better leave me, please." "Why so?" She smiled, looking me straight in the eyes. "Quien sabe? To avoid a scene, perhaps; perhaps, to postpone. I have an idea that it is better so. You've baited Daniel far enough for to-night." We walked almost without speaking, to the Hyrum Adams fire. Daniel lifted upper lip at me as we entered; his eyes never wandered from my face. I marked his right hand quivering stiffly; and I disregarded him. For if I had challenged him by so much as an overt glance he would have burst bonds. Rachael's eyes, the older woman's eyes, the eyes of all, men and women, curious, admonitory, hostile and apprehensive, hot and cold together--these I felt also amidst the dusk. I was distinctly unwelcome. Accordingly I said a civil "Good-evening" to Hyrum (whose response out of compressed lips was scarce more than a grunt) and raising my hat to My Lady turned my back upon them, for my own bailiwick. The other men were waiting en route. "Didn't kill ye, did he?" "No." "Wall," said one, "if you can swing a rattler by the tail, all right. But watch his haid." Friend Jenks paced on with me to our fire. "We were keepin' cases on you, and so was he. He saw that practice--damn, how he did crane! She was givin' you pointers, eh?" "Yes; she wanted amusement." "It'll set Bonnie Bravo to thinkin'--it'll shorely set him to thinkin'," Jenks chuckled, mouthing his pipe. "She's a smart one." He comfortably rocked to and fro as we sat by the fire. "Hell! Wall, if you got to kill him you got to kill him and do it proper. For if you don't kill him he'll kill you; snuff you out like a--wall, you saw that can travel." "I don't want to kill him," I pleaded. "Why should I?" Jenks sat silent; and sitting silent I foresaw that kill Daniel I must. I was being sucked into it, irrevocably willed by him, by her, by them all. If I did not kill him in defense of myself I should kill him in defense of her. Yet why I had to, I wondered; but when I had bought my ticket for Benton I had started the sequence, to this result. Here I was. As she had said, here I was, and here she was. I might not kill for love--no, not that; I was going to kill for hate. And while I never had killed a man, and in my heart of hearts did not wish to kill a man, since I had to kill one, named Daniel, even though he was a bully, a braggart and an infernal over-stepper it was pleasanter to think that I should kill him in hot blood rather than in cold. Jenks spat, and yawned.