..She would not live with me.
She left me--I followed her west, but never found her."
Warren leaned forward a little and looked into Cameron's eyes, as
if searching there for the repentance that might make him less
deserving of a man's scorn.
Cameron met the gaze unflinchingly, and again began to speak:
"You know, of course, how men out here somehow lose old names, old
identities. It won't surprise you much to learn my name really isn't
Cameron, as I once told you."
Warren stiffened upright. It seemed that there might have been a
blank, a suspension, between his grave interest and some strange
mood to come.
Cameron felt his heart bulge and contract in his breast; all his
body grew cold; and it took tremendous effort for him to make his
lips form words.
"Warren, I'm the man you're hunting. I'm Burton. I was Nell's
lover!"
The old man rose and towered over Cameron, and then plunged down
upon him, and clutched at his throat with terrible stifling hands.
The harsh contact, the pain awakened Cameron to his peril before
it was too late. Desperate fighting saved him from being hurled
to the ground and stamped and crushed. Warren seemed a maddened
giant. There was a reeling, swaying, wrestling struggle before
the elder man began to weaken. The Cameron, buffeted, bloody,
half-stunned, panted for speech.
"Warren--hold on! Give me--a minute. I married Nell. Didn't you
know that?...I saved the child!"
Cameron felt the shock that vibrated through Warren.
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