The Two-Bar Brand - Chapter 7 The Judgment of God

She gave a moaning sigh, her face contracted woefully, and she opened
her eyes. The man looked into them as a curious child might look into
an opened door.

"Did you see what happened?" he asked her when she had come fully to
herself.

"Yes," Joan whispered, her lips shaking.

"I've killed the brute."

Her face became a classic mask of tragedy, the drawn brows, horrified
eyes, and widened mouth.

"Pierre? Killed?" Her voice, hardly more than a whisper, filled the
house with its agony.

"Are you sorry?" demanded her rescuer sternly. "Was he in the habit of
tying you up or was this--branding--a special diversion?"

Joan turned her face away, writhed from head to foot, put up her two
hands between him and her agonizing memories.

The man rose and left her, going softly into the next room. There he
stood in a tense attitude of thought, sat down presently with his
long, narrow jaw in his hands and stared fixedly at Pierre. He was
evidently trying to fight down the shock of the spectacle, grimly
telling himself to become used to the fact that here lay the body of a
man that he had killed. In a short time he seemed to be successful,
his face grew calm. He looked away from Pierre and turned his mind to
the woman.

"She can't stay here," he said presently, in the tone of a man who has
fallen into the habit of talking aloud to himself. He looked about in
a hesitant, doubtful fashion. "God!" he said abruptly and snapped his
fingers and thumb. He looked angry. Again he bent over Pierre,
examined him with thoroughness and science, his face becoming more and
more calm. At the end he rose and with an air of authority he went in
again to Joan. She lay with her face turned to the wall.