by A. J. Arnold
“He’s dead. The doctor told him to avoid any excitement.”
As if in a trance, she moved back to Henry. She looked down, and hesitantly leaned over to lay a soft hand on his waxy forehead. After a moment Nancy straightened to confront the other men. The strange silence grew long.
The marshal fidgeted. “Mrs. Blough,” he asked cautiously, “I don’t know quite how to word this. But, ah, well, there’s a lot of death here and all, and gonna be plenty of legal things for you to see to. How will all this land claim business work out now? Do you know what to do?”
“I do,” she said promptly, with an unexpected smile. “It all falls to me now. To Buck—I mean, to Diamond—and to myself.”
Nancy walked, a little too brightly, to Diamond’s side. “It’s all complicated, you see, but it will be perfectly legal. It will be all—”
She suddenly went pale and fainted at his feet.
He bent to cradle her in his arms, as he knew he could do now whenever he chose. Now that his ranch and his name would be totally cleared, and he could soon call Nancy Mrs. Diamond Buckow.