It seemed to Dan that some stern code of the hills, unwritten except in the hearts of their children, inexorable as night, was speaking through her lips. This was no personal thing. In some dim, half-understood way, it went back to the basic code of life. "People must fight their own fights, up here," she told him. "The laws of the courts that the plains' people can appeal to are all too far away. There's no one that can do it, except you. Not my father. My father can't fight your battles here, if your honor is going to stand. It's up to you, Dan. You can't pretend that you didn't hear him. Such as you are, weak and sick to be beaten to a pulp in two minutes, you alone will have to make him answer for it. I came to your aid--and now you must come to mine." Her fingers no longer clasped his. Strength had come back to him, and his fingers closed down until the blood went out of hers, but she was wholly unconscious of the pain. In reality, she was conscious of nothing except the growing flame in his face. It held her eyes, in passionate fascination. His pupils were contracting to little bright dots in the gray irises. The jaw was setting, as she had never seen it before. "Do you _think_, Snowbird, that you'd even have to ask me?" he demanded. "Don't you think I understand? And it won't be in your defense--only my own duty." "But he is so strong--and you are so weak--" "I won't be so weak forever. I never really cared much about living before. I'll try now, and you'll see--oh, Snowbird, wait and trust me: I understand everything. It's my own fight--when you kissed me, and he cried down that word in anger and jealousy, it put the whole thing on me. No one else can make him answer; no one else has the right. It's my honor, no one else's, that stands or falls." He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it again and again. And for the first time he saw the tears gathering in her dark eyes. "But you _fought_ here, didn't you, Dan?" she asked with painful slowness. "You didn't put up your arms--or try to run away? I didn't come till he had you done, so I didn't see." She looked at him as if her whole joy of life hung on his answer. "Fought! I would have fought till I died! But that isn't enough, Snowbird. It isn't enough just to fight, in a case like this. A man's got to win! I would have died if you hadn't come. And that's another debt that I have to pay--only that debt I owe to _you_." She nodded slowly. The lives of the mountain men are not saved by their women without incurring obligation. She attempted no barren denials. She made no effort to pretend he had not incurred a tremendous debt when she had come with her pistol. It was an unavoidable fact. A life for a life is the code of the mountains.