doin' the square thing to you"--He stopped, breathed hard, and then
said brokenly, "My hoss is over thar, staked out. I want to give him
to you. Judge Boompointer will give you a thousand dollars for him. I
ain't lyin'; it's God's truth! I saw it on the handbill agin a tree.
Take him, and I'll get away afoot. Take him. It's the only thing I can
do for you, and I know it don't half pay for what you did. Take it;
your father can get a reward for you, if you can't."

Such were the ethics of this strange locality that neither the man who
made the offer nor the girl to whom it was made was struck by anything
that seemed illogical or indelicate, or at all inconsistent with
justice or the horse-thief's real conversion. Salomy Jane nevertheless
dissented, from another and weaker reason.

"I don't want your hoss, though I reckon dad might; but you're just
starvin'. I'll get suthin'." She turned towards the house.

"Say you'll take the hoss first," he said, grasping her hand. At
the touch she felt herself coloring and struggled, expecting perhaps
another kiss. But he dropped her hand. She turned again with a saucy
gesture, said, "Hol' on; I'll come right back," and slipped away,
the mere shadow of a coy and flying nymph in the moonlight, until she
reached the house.

Here she not only procured food and whiskey, but added a long
dust-coat and hat of her father's to her burden. They would serve
as a disguise for him and hide that heroic figure, which she
thought everybody must now know as she did. Then she rejoined him
breathlessly. But he put the food and whiskey aside.