Then, Uncle Dick, in his turn, displayed some slight symptoms of embarrassment, and cleared his throat in a manner to shock a drawing-room.
"An' now I got jest one leetle favor to ax o' ye, Seth Jones. You-all knows as how the gals in this-hyar kentry air partic'lar proud to have a weddin' ring made from the gold washed out o' the soil in Pleasant Valley by their sweetheart. Wall, I talked a heap 'bout hit to Fanny, an', when she showed signs like she'd give in to me, I went an' panned the gold fer the ring. Fanny'd be right-smart disapp'inted not to have a lover-made ring, I reckon. So, bein' as you-all only got one arm, I wants ye to take this-hyar ring, an' wed her proper with the blessin' an' best wishes o' Uncle Dick Siddon."
He offered the ring, which was gratefully accepted, and the two old men parted on excellent terms.
At eleven o'clock the next morning, Uncle Dick was sitting on the porch, when he saw a horse passing over the trail toward the south. In the saddle was the erect, spruce figure of the one-armed veteran, Seth Jones. And, on a blanket strapped behind the saddle to serve as pillion, rode a woman, with her arms clasped around the man's waist. It was the Widow Brown, dressed all in gala white.
Uncle Dick stared fixedly until the two had vanished beyond the brow of the hill. Then, at last, he stirred, and his eyes roved over his home and its surroundings wistfully. He sighed heavily. But he himself would have been hard put to it to tell whether that sigh held more of regret, or of relief.
While her grandfather was still on the porch, and her sister was out of the house, Plutina possessed herself of the new revolver, with its holster, which, after slipping down her gown from the shoulder, she attached under the left arm-pit. The looseness of the ill-fitting garment concealed the weapon effectually enough. For ready access, the upper buttons to the throat were left unfastened, in seeming relief against the heat of midday. Thus equipped, the girl stole out through the back way, unobserved by her relations, to keep tryst with the desperado.
As she followed a blind trail that shortened the distance between the Siddon cabin and the Holloman Gate to a short two miles, Plutina was torturing a brain already overtaxed in the effort to devise some means whereby she might wreck the projects of the villain, without at the same time bringing ruin on herself, or those she loved. Always, however, her thoughts went spinning toward the same vortex of destruction. She could, indeed, contrive nothing better than the policy of cajolery on which she had first determined, and to this course, as it seemed to her, she must cling, though her good sense was well advised of its futility. She knew that a scoundrel of Hodges unrestrained passions could not long be held from his infamous purposes by any art of hers. At the best, she might hope perhaps to delay the catastrophe only by hours. In her discouraged state, she admitted that it would be quite impossible to restrain him until the law should come to her aid. She was determined none the less to employ every resource at her command, in order to postpone decisive action. One thing was at once her chief reliance and her chief source of fear: the outlaw's passion for her. In his brutal fashion, the man loved her. That fact gave her power over him, even while it exposed her to the worst peril at his hands.