I begged her again to come with me, but her fears held her back.

She vowed, however, that Bennett should never touch her again, and I made her swear by her love for the babe that she would die before he ever laid hands on her.

It woke a savage joy in me to think I had bested him, after all.
"I never thought of what I was giving up, of the clean name I was soiling, of the mine back there that meant a fortune anytime I cared to take it, for things like that don't count when a man's blood is hot, so I rode away in the yellow moonlight with a sleeping baby on my breast, where no child or woman had ever lain except for that minute before I left.

She stood out from beneath the porch shadow and smiled her good-bye--the last I ever saw of her....
"I travelled hard that night and swapped horses at daylight; then, leaving the wild country behind, I came into a region I didn't know, and found a Mexican woman who tended the child for me, for I was close by the place where Merridy was to come.

Every night I went into the village in hopes that some word had arrived, and I waited patiently for a week.