He came close and stood devouring her with the passion of his lecherous eyes, and Dorothy knew that her long effort to play a part had reached its climax. He reached out his hands and for the second time he laid them upon her, but now he did not seek to sweep her into an embrace. He merely let his fingers rest, unsteady with hot feeling, on her shoulders as he said, "Why kain't we quit foolin' along with each other, gal? _He_ hain't nuver comin' back ter ye no more." But at that Dorothy jerked herself away and her over-wrought control snapped. "What does ye mean?" she demanded, breathlessly. A sudden fear possessed her that fatal news had reached him before it had come to her. "Hes anything happened ter him?" Instantly she realized what she had done, but it was useless to go on acting after the self-betrayal of that moment's agitation, and even Rowlett's self-complacent egotism read the whole truth of its meaning. He read it and knew with a fullness of conviction that through the whole episode she had been leading him on as a hunter decoys game and that her slow and grudging conversion was no conversion at all. "Nothin' hain't happened ter him _yit_, so fur's I knows," he said, slowly. "But ye doomed him ter death when ye flared up like thet, an' proved ter me thet ye'd jest been lyin'." Dorothy gave back to the wall and one hand groped with outstretched fingers against the smoothly squared logs, while the other ripped open the buttons of her waist and closed on the knife hilt that was always concealed there. Her voice came low and in a dead and monotonous level and her face was ghost pale. "Yes, I lied ter ye ter keep ye from goin' over thar an' murderin' him. I knowed ther way ye fights--I hain't nuver feared ye on my own account but I _did_ fear ye fer him ther same es a rattlesnake thet lays cyled in ther grass." She paused and drew a resolute breath and her words were hardly louder than a whisper. "Thar hain't no way on y'arth I wouldn't fight ter save him--even ef I hed ter fight a Judas in Judas fashion. So I aimed ter keep ye hyar--an' I kep' ye." "Ye've kep' me thus fur," he corrected her with his swarthy face as malevolent as had ever been that of his red-skinned ancestors. "But ye told ther truth awhile ago--an' ye told hit a mite too previous. Ther matter hain't ended yit." "Yes, hit's es good es ended," she assured him with the death-like quiet of a final resolve. "I made up my mind sometime back thet ye hed ter die, Bas." Slowly the right hand came out of her loosened blouse and the firelight flashed on the blade of the dirk so tightly held that the woman's knuckles stood out white. "I'm goin' ter kill ye now, Bas," she said. For a few long moments they stood without other words, the woman holding the dirk close to her side, and neither of them noted that for the past ten minutes the sound of the axe had been silent off there in the woods.