Flora rattled the dishes in the pan and laughed unsteadily. "Go to work, Billy Boy, and don't act stagey," she commanded lightly. "I'll tell you the exact truth--and that isn't anything to get excited over. Fred Walland came about three minutes before you did, and of course I didn't know he belonged there. I was afraid. He pushed open the door, and he was swearing a little at the ice there, where we threw out the dish water. I knew it wasn't you, and I got back in the corner. He came in and looked awfully stunned at seeing me and said, 'I beg your pardon, fair one'." She blushed and did not look up. "He said, 'I didn't know there was a lady present,' and put down the sack of stuff and looked at me for a minute or two without saying a word. He was just going to speak, I think, when you burst in. And that's all there was to it, Billy Boy. I was frightened because I didn't know who he was, and he _did_ stare--but, so did you, Billy Boy, when I opened the door and walked in. You stared every bit as hard and long as Fred Walland did." "But I'll bet I didn't have the same look in my face. Yuh wasn't scared of _me_," Billy asserted shrewdly. "I was too! I was horribly scared--at first. So if you fought Fred Walland and killed his dog" (the reproach of her tone, then!) "because you imagined a lot that wasn't true, you ought to go straight and apologize." "I don't _think_ I will! Good Lord! Flora, do yuh think I don't _know_ the stuff he's made of? He's a low-down, cowardly cur--the kind uh man that is always bragging about--" (Billy stuck there. With her big, innocent eyes looking up at him, he could not say "bragging about the women he's ruined," so he changed weakly) "about all he's done. He's a murderer that ought by rights t' be in the pen right now--" "I think that will do, Billy!" she interrupted indignantly. "You know he couldn't help killing that man." "I kinda believed that, too, till I run onto Jim Johnson up in Tower. You don't know Jim, but he's a straight man and wouldn't lie. Yuh remember, Flora, the Pilgrim told me the Swede pulled a knife on him. I stooped down and looked, and _I_ didn't see no knife--nor gun, either. And I wasn't so blamed excited I'd be apt to pass up anything like that; I've seen men shot before, and pass out with their boots on, in more excitable ways than a little, plain, old killing. So I didn't see anything in the shape of a weapon. But when I come back, here lays a Colt forty-five right in plain sight, and the Pilgrim saying, 'He pulled a _gun_ on me,' right on top uh telling me it was a _knife_. I thought at the time there was something queer about that, and about him not having a gun on him when I know he _always_ packed one--like every other fool Pilgrim that comes West with the idea he's got to fight his way along from breakfast to supper, and sleep with his six-gun under his pillow!"