Another
form skulked behind him--Black Bart.
He was close, very close, before he stopped, or seemed to see her, though
she felt that he must have been aware of her since he first rode up. He was
so close, indeed, that the starlight--the brim of his hat standing up
somewhat from the swift riding--showed his face quite clearly to her. It
was boyish, almost, in its extreme youth, and so thinly molded, and his
frame so lightly made, that he seemed one risen from a wasting bed of
sickness. The wind fluttered his shirt and she wondered, as she had
wondered so often before, where he gained that incredible strength in so
meager a body. In all her life she had never loved him as she loved him
now. But her mind was as fixed as a star.
"You can't have her, Dan. You can't have her! Don't you see how terrible a
thing you'd make her? She's my blood, my pain, my love, and you want to
take her up yonder to the mountains and the loneliness--I'll die to keep
her!"
Now the moon, which had been buried in a drift of clouds, broke through
them, and seemed in an instant to slide a vast distance towards the earth,
a crooked half moon with its edges eaten by the mist.
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