"Everything seems to be working against me and now, because you have been my help, my strength, they are trying to take you away. Oh, I need all the help there is, and that is you!"--with a stamp of the foot as she drove tears back. "There are influences which I can't see, which I can only feel, all about me, within me,"--beating her breast--"and outside." "It may be interestin' to you to know that I didn't shoot at any coyote." She gasped lightly and for a moment did not speak. "Then you did shoot at Hepburn?"--in a whisper. "No, I didn't. I'd never shoot from cover." "I knew that," she said quickly, knowing that by her question she had hurt him. "It appears that I ain't very welcome with your foreman. It was a frame-up, a good way to get rid of me. They planted that evidence in my gun while I was eating. It was one of those influences at work, the kind you've only felt. You can see some of 'em now, ma'am.... "It's lucky you thought to lie," he said, with a weak laugh that was unlike him. "I guess you're going to need all your luck.... "But you better go in now. It's late and cold." He wanted her to be away from him, to be rid of her presence, for it pulled him, drew him, and he fought against it, fought against the strongest impulse that has been born to man, fought blindly, his old, deeply rooted caution, dragging him back ... dragging him.... "I don't want to go in; I don't want to leave you," she said. "I want--" "But you must go. Have I got to pick you up an' carry you into your house, ma'am?" "I want you to take this," she went on where he had interrupted, fumbling at the catch of the chain which held the locket against her throat. "Take it," she said, holding it swinging toward him, spattered with moonlight. "It's brought me all the luck I've ever had; it will help you, it will protect you. You need luck as much as I do ... and you need it for me. Wear it, a foolish little trinket but it means ... oh, more than you can know! I'd like to think of you as wearing it...." "I don't think I need that, ma'am. What's in it?" "Don't ask that! Don't even open it, please. Just take it and wear it, for me." He made no move to take the ornament, just stood looking at it skeptically. "Take it ... and then I will go in, without being carried." She reached up to place the chain about his neck with her own hands; her unsteady fingers, fumbling with the catch, slipped and her cool, bared arms, touched his flesh. At the contact she swayed against him. "Oh, carry me in," she pleaded gently, "carry me in ... not into my house, but into your life!" All the caution, all the reason he had summoned to hold back that urge was swept aside. The touch of her skin against his skin sent seething blood to the ends of his limbs. It did not need her plea to break him down; the touch accomplished it, and fiercely, roughly, he caught her to him.