"What?" she screamed, springing back in a perfect agony of horror. "What?" He stared at her, amazed and even frightened by this new, this terribly new, ring in her voice. She was raising her hands slowly to her throat, and shrinking away--shrinking back against the wall as though he were some loathsome thing upon which she had suddenly and unexpectedly come. "What's the matter?" he cried, forgetting his own feelings in this new alarm. "Did--you--kill--Bill--Whitly?" "Yes," he answered, not understanding. "Why?" The room was sickeningly quiet, except for her breathing. He could have almost sworn her eyes were crackling and snapping as they stared at him. "Why?" she repeated. "Can you ask any one of my name in the mountains, why?" "I never thought," he whispered in a terrified voice, "you belonged to _those_ Whitlys!" And as he looked more closely at her face the truth slowly crept into his brain. Passionately his hands went out to her, as he took a trembling step forward: "My Gawd, my Gawd, Miss Jane! Don't tell me that I done _that_! Don't tell me it war _yoh_ Pappy!" The telephone was on the wall of this room. Keeping the long table between them, she crossed quickly and turned the little crank. Recognizing the town operator's voice she frantically called: "Miss Gregget, this is Jane Whitly!--well, never mind the name!--this is Colonel May's house!" She was numb, and fearful of those passionate hands which might any instant drag her from the instrument. "Tell the sheriff to come quick!" she screamed. "Dale Dawson has killed Tusk Potter!" With this she sprang about, her back to the wall and at bay, to receive the infuriated mountaineer's charge. But he had not moved. He stood just where she had left him; looking at her, now again swaying his body in that tense, sullen motion. And suddenly she began to laugh, leaning forward in a crouching attitude, her hands clenched close to her knees. "You didn't think, when you laid my Pappy across our door sill, that he'd be avenged by a girl, did you!" He only looked at her, staring in a dull, hopeless sort of way that would have struck pity into the heart of anyone not so blinded by passion. "You didn't think, did ye," she taunted, with direful malice darting from her eyes, and assuming the mountain dialect so her words would carry a sharper sting, "that Dale Dawson could be headed off, did ye! Yo' sorry life of ignorance never went so fur as ter reckon that poh, ole Bill Whitly, shot down from behind, 'd be so sure in gittin' vengeance, did ye! Ye thought my Pappy war the last of his line, jest as you're the last of yourn!" Her laugh now became quite uncontrollable, but between gasps she still fired taunts at him. "Didn't reckon yo' god Natur' could raise some-un weaker'n ye ter crush ye out! Didn't reckin hit war likely the last Dawson 'd be fetched down by the last Whitly--'n' her a gal!"