She frowned. A mental picture of the cowboy rose quickly and vividly before her. She saw the clear, steadfast eyes, the free, upright carriage, the flash of a smile that was like a boy's. She had come to be firm in her belief that he was the man who had robbed her, had forced the insult of his kiss upon her, but it was hard, with that picture of him before her, to think him a murderer, too. But then, as though to sweep away her last shred of doubt, the vision widened and into it came another man: she saw Buck Thornton as she had seen him only a few minutes ago, in seeming friendly conversation with the youngest Bedloe whose eyes soiled the woman they rested upon, whose name had travelled even to her home in Crystal City and beyond as a roisterer, a brawler, a man of unsavoury deeds done boldly and shamelessly.
"I am a little sick of it all," she said wearily. "I want to go back home, uncle."
He had looked for that and had his answer ready.
"I know, Winifred. And I don't blame you. But I want you to stay a little longer, won't you? Your evidence is going to be the strongest card in our deck. Will you stay and give it?"
"Not long now. I expect Dalton here today."
"Cole Dalton, the sheriff. He is as anxious as I am to get his hands on Thornton. The whole country has been growing hotter in its criticisms of him every day for the last six months, blaming him for not rounding up the man who has committed one depredation on top of another, and gotten away with it."
"And you are sure," she hesitated a little in spite of herself, repeating, "you are sure ... that Buck Thornton is that man?"
"Yes. I guessed it a long time ago. I know it now that he has robbed you. You will wait a few days, won't you?"
"Yes, I'll wait. But, oh," she cried out with sudden vehemence, swinging about when half way to the door, "I hate this sort of thing! Get it over with quick, Uncle Henry!"
She left him then and went upstairs to her own room where for a little she tried to concentrate her wandering thoughts upon a book. But in the end she flung the volume aside impatiently and went to her window, staring down into the neglected tangle of the front yard and the glimpse of the street through the straggling branches of the pear trees. She tried to see only that men like Kid Bedloe and Buck Thornton were not to be thought of as men, but rather as some rare species of clear-eyed, unscrupulous, conscienceless animals; that they were not human, that it would not be humane but foolish to regard them with any kind of sympathy; that the law should set its iron heel upon them as a man might set his heel upon a snake's flat, venomous head.