“The devil you did!” broke from the Girl’s lips, but with a sound that was not unlike a sob.
“I did, believe me, I did,” insisted the man. “I meant to go straight and take you with me--but only honestly--when I could honestly. I meant to work for you. Why, every word you said to me to-night about being a thief cut into me like a knife. Over and over again I have said to myself, she must never know. And now--well, it’s all over--I have finished.”
“An’ that’s all?” questioned the Girl with averted face.
“But there’s jest one thing you’ve overlooked explainin’, Mr. Johnson. It shows exactly what you are. It wasn’t so much your bein’ a road agent I got against you. It’s this:” And here she stamped her foot excitedly. “You kissed me--you got my first kiss.”
“You said,” kept on the Girl, hotly, “you’d ben thinkin’ o’ me ever since you saw me at Monterey, an’ all the time you walked straight off an’ ben kissin’ that other woman.” She shrugged her shoulder and laughed grimly. “You’ve got a girl,” she continued, growing more and more indignant. “It’s that I’ve got against you. It’s my first kiss I’ve got against you. It’s that Nina Micheltoreña that I can’t forgive. So now you can git--git!” And with these words she unbolted the door and concluded tensely:
“If they kill you I don’t care. Do you hear, I don’t care....”
At those bitter words spoken by lips which failed so utterly to hide their misery, the Girl’s face became colourless.
With the instinct of a brave man to sell his life as dearly as possible, Johnson took a couple of guns from his pocket; but the next moment, as if coming to the conclusion that death without the Girl would be preferable, he put them back, saying:
The next instant he had passed out of the door which she held wide open for him.
“That’s the end o’ that--that’s the end o’ that,” she wound up, slamming the door after him. But all the way from the threshold to the bureau she kept murmuring to herself: “I don’t care, I don’t care.... I’ll be like the rest o’ the women I’ve seen. I’ll give that Nina Micheltoreña cards an’ spades. There’ll be another hussy around here. There’ll be--” The threat was never finished. Instead, with eyes that fairly started out of their sockets, she listened to the sound of a couple of shots, the last one exploding so loud and distinct that there was no mistaking its nearness to the cabin.