“I am a killer!” said Dan McMasters bitterly. “That’s what I have become for sake of Texas, for sake of the law, for sake of women and children, I suppose. But no woman or child for me! It’s worse to be a killer than it is to be killed. Well I know that. But I was mad that night. I just thought of what might have happened to you.” “Sir, this is not easy to listen to!” She sank back on her rude fireside seat, trembling. “I wish you had not come! I wish I had never seen you!” “I can say the same! But why do you wish that? It’s easy to forget me. But I cannot forget.” He stepped closer, his voice low. She only shook her head from side to side and would not speak. “Why?” he demanded again fiercely; and still she answered not at all. “You have nothing to forget,” he went on. “It may be easy for women to forget—I don’t know. But it is my curse that I can never change—I can’t forget. What I want I must have—I can’t change!” He sighed. His hands dropped, still crooked to clasp her, to grasp her arms, and hold her fast. “Well, say that I come to you now only as a peace officer to-night. I have used my own methods. That’s all the life work there is for Daniel McMasters. There is no possible reward for me except to come to you some time and tell you that I have finished the work I started out to do.” She sat, her head bowed forward in her hands. A cricket was calling loudly in the grass. Presently she heard the man’s even voice go on. “I know who killed your father and mine. I could have killed Rudabaugh three days ago. I ought to have done so. I was on the point of killing him. What kept me from it? I knew that some one of his men would kill me if I did, but that ought not to have mattered—I don’t think it would have mattered; we have to take those chances in my business. Why did I hold back? Why did I wait for another time? I’ll have to tell you! Suddenly I thought, ‘If these men kill me now I’ll never see her face again!’ Wasn’t it silly? “I reckon I wanted to see your face again. I’d not be honest if I did not tell you that. I, McMasters of the Rangers, held back—for that! But this will be the last time. I came to your camp—it was a hard thing for a proud man to do. Well, now you know why I dared.” “Won’t you be seated, sir?” Taisie’s voice came faintly. “No; you speak too late. I must go. But before I go I shall tell you once more, so you may remember it always—I love you more than anything else and everything else in all the world. There’ll never be any other woman for me.” “Then, why, why?” she demanded hoarsely. “What is it that you mean when you say that you must go—that you never will——” The cricket in the grass was asserting himself loudly, insistently. “Life is short for me,” he answered. “It may be long for you. Why should I pretend, who am about to die?” His voice was relentless. He carried always the feeling of relentlessness, of an unemotional, unconditional coldness in purpose. An icy man, a terrible man, even now.