When Sheldon came up on the veranda, he found Joan collapsed on the
steamer-chair and in tears. The sight unnerved him as the row just over
could not possibly have done. A woman in tears was to him an
embarrassing situation; and when that woman was Joan Lackland, from whom
he had grown to expect anything unexpected, he was really frightened. He
glanced down at her helplessly, and moistened his lips.
"I want to thank you," he began. "There isn't a doubt but what you saved
my life, and I must say--"
She abruptly removed her hands, showing a wrathful and tear-stained face.
"You brute! You coward!" she cried. "You have made me shoot a man, and
I never shot a man in my life before."
"It's only a flesh-wound, and he isn't going to die," Sheldon managed to
interpolate.
"What of that? I shot him just the same. There was no need for you to
jump down there that way. It was brutal and cowardly."
"Oh, now I say--" he began soothingly.
"Go away. Don't you see I hate you! hate you! Oh, won't you go away!"
Sheldon was white with anger.
"Then why in the name of common sense did you shoot?" he demanded.
"Be-be-because you were a white man," she sobbed. "And Dad would never
have left any white man in the lurch. But it was your fault.
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