"Bah!" she added scornfully. "The jury was made up of fools, and men
knew it. The sheriff himself told you so when he slipped you out of
the jail where he had protected you, and let you loose across the
border in the night. Didn't he? And he told you that if ever you came
back to Butte, he would not turn a hand to keep you from the clutches
of the mob; didn't he? And now you are plain 'Mister Brown,' working
somewhere back up in the hills, are you? Well, Mr. Brown, you keep
away from the High Light. Get out!"
Some one made a restless motion, and declared the man should be
hanged, even now, but The Lily turned her angry eyes on the speaker,
and silenced him.
"Not if I can help it, or any of my friends can," she said coolly.
"There'll be no mobbing anybody around here. I've said enough. Let him
alone, but remember what kind of a blackguard he is. That's all!"
She turned back and tossed the pistol behind the bar, and the crowd,
as if her words and the advice of the more contained element
prevailed, resumed its play. She looked up, and saw the partners
waiting to bid her good-night, and suddenly bit her lip, as if ashamed
that they had seen her fury unmasked.
"We're going now," Bill said, reaching out his hand. She did not take
it, but looked around the room with unreadable eyes.
"I'll walk with you to the beginning of your trail," she said. "I'm
sick of this," and led the way out into the night.
For half the length of the long street, she strode between them,
wordless, and then suddenly halted and held her arms apart
appealingly.
"What must you think of me?" she said, with a note of grief in her
voice. "Oh, you two don't know it all! You don't know what it takes to
make a woman, who tries to be decent, rebellious at everything under
the skies. What brutes there are walking the earth! Sometimes, lately,
I begin to doubt if there is a God!"
"And that," exclaimed the quiet, steadfast young voice at her side,
"is unworthy of you and your intelligence."
She halted again, as if thinking.
"And I," said the giant, in his deep, musical tones, "know there's
one. It takes more than men to make me believe there ain't. I know it
when I look at them!" He waved his hands at the starlit mountains
surrounding them, and towering in serenity high up to the cloudless
spaces.
"I'd be mighty ashamed to doubt when I can see them," he said, "and if
they went away, I'd still believe it; because if I didn't, I couldn't
see no use in livin' any more. It's havin' Him lean down and whisper
to you once in a while, in the night, when everything seems to be
goin' wrong, 'Old boy, you did well,' that keeps it all worth while
and makes a feller stiffen his back and go ahead, with his conscience
clean and not carin' a cuss what anybody says or thinks, so longs as
he knows that the Lord knows he did the right thing."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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