"Oh, you were in trouble! I didn't know. I couldn't think.... I saw it all so clearly, all in a flash, saw that all you needed was one little word from someone else to make it right and I didn't care beyond that. It was the only thing that mattered. If they had taken you away I'd have been alone, wholly alone...." "You believed me when I told 'em I shot at a coyote?" "Believe? Believe? I didn't think, didn't consider. It made no difference to me what you had done. The only thing I wanted to do was to set you free, to clear you!" "You'd lie for me, even if you thought I'd shot to kill a man?" he insisted. "I didn't know what you had--" "You'd take a chance like that? Why would you, ma'am?" For a long moment their eyes, half seen to one another in those shadows, clung almost fiercely, his inquisitory, hers changing as wave followed wave of emotion through her body. She had never seen him so dominating, and he had no need to insist again that she answer. She let her head fall back with a half smile. "Oh, I did it because it was the only thing I could do.... I did it, Tom, because I--" He straightened sharply and cut in: "I know, ma'am; you did it because you need me here, on the ranch." His chest swelled with a great breath and he released her hands, stepping back and putting a hand slowly to his head. For an instant she made no sound. Then she laughed strangely. "Because I need you here.... Yes, that was it. That was why I lied for you." She spoke with nervous rapidity, rather breathlessly, and one hand went again to that locket, clutching it in a cold clasp. "I knew it was not like you to try to shoot a man unfairly. I didn't think there was much chance in lying. All I saw was them taking you away and leaving me here alone to face all this, without anyone I can trust, without anyone to help me. That was why I lied to them. "You promised me once that you would stay. I knew then that I needed you; every hour since that promise was made I've had a greater realization of my need for you until it ... it ..." Her breath caught in a sob and she pressed knuckles to her lips. Beck stood silently watching her, a cold moisture forming on his brow, hands clenched as if he were holding himself against the urge of some great impulse. "I felt when I stepped in there and learned what it all was, that the last thing I have to depend on was slipping away ... and I reached out and grasped you like I'd grasp a straw in a sea. It ... I can't tell you,"--her voice trembled, "what it meant, what it means to me...." Words, words! They spilled from her lips with a rapidity that approached hysteria. She was talking without thought, without reason, letting her voice run on while her consciousness, divorced entirely from it, fell into chaos.