"Very well," she said calmly. She leaned back in her chair, looking at him, feeling a quick pulse of pity for him, for as she sat there and waited, saying nothing further, she saw a faint red steal into his cheeks. She knew that he had expected an invitation to join her on the porch; he was ent.i.tled to that courtesy because of her treatment of him on the occasion of his previous visit; and that when the invitation did not come he could not but feel deeply the embarra.s.sment of the situation.

The faint glow died out of his face, and the lines of his lips grew a trifle more firm. This reception was not the one he had antic.i.p.ated, but then there were moods into which people fell. She was subject to moods, too, for he remembered the night she had hurt her ankle--how she had "roasted" him. And his face grew long with an inward mirth. She would ask him to get off his horse, presently, and then he was going to tell her of his feelings on that night.

But she did not invite him to alight. On the contrary, she maintained a silence that was nearly severe. He divined that this mood was to continue and instead of getting off his pony he swung crossways in the saddle.

"We've got the cattle all out of the hills an' the timber, an' we're workin' down the crick toward here," he told her. "There ain't nothin'

unusual happened, except"--and here he paused for a brief instant--"that I had to shoot a man. It was Watt Kelso, from over Lazette way. I hired him two weeks before."

"I heard of it," she returned steadily, her voice expressionless.

"I hated like poison to do it. But I had no choice. He brought it on himself."

"Yes, I suppose so," she said flatly. She looked at him now with the first flash of emotion that she had allowed him to see. "If killing people is your trade, and you choose to persist in it, I don't see how we are to stop you."

He looked sharply at her, but his voice was low and even. "I don't shoot folks for the fun of it, ma'am."

"No?"--with scornful disbelief. "Well, I presume it doesn't make much difference. Dead people wouldn't appreciate the joke, anyway."

His face was serious now, for he could see that she was deeply disturbed over the shooting.

"I reckon you wouldn't believe me, no matter how hard I talked," he said.

"You'd have your own opinion. It sure does look bad for me--havin' to plug two guys in one season. An' I don't blame you for feelin' like you do about it. But I've got this to say," he went on earnestly. "Kelso come to the outfit, lookin' for trouble. I'd had a run-in with him a few years ago. An' I shot him--in the arm. I thought it was all over. But along comes Kelso, with his mustache shaved off so's I wouldn't know him--which I did. He asked me for a job, an' I give it to him--hopin'. But hopes--"

"If you knew him, why did you give him a job?" she interrupted. "It might have saved you shooting him."

"If he was wantin' to force trouble he'd have done it sooner or later, ma'am."

"Well?" she said, interested in spite of herself.

"He waited two weeks for a chance. I didn't give him any chance. An'

then, one night, after Red Owen had been cuttin' up some monkey shines, he talked fresh an' pulled his gun. He was a regular gunfighter, ma'am; he'd been hired to put me out of business."

There was an appeal in his eyes that did not show in his voice; and it would be all the appeal that he would make. Looking fixedly at him, she became certain of that.

"Do you know who hired him?"

There was that in her tone which told him that he might now make his case strong--might even convince her, and thus be restored to that grace from which he, plainly, had fallen. But he was a claimant for her hand, he had told her that he would not press that claim until she broke her engagement with Masten, and if he now told her that it had been the Easterner who had hired Kelso to kill him, he would have felt that she would think he had taken advantage of the situation, selfishly. And he preferred to take his chance, slender though it seemed to be.

"He didn't tell me."

"Then you only suspected it?"

He was silent for an instant. Then: "A man told me he was hired."

"Who told you?"

"I ain't mentionin', ma'am." He could not tell her that Blair had told him, after he had told Blair not to mention it.

She smiled with cold incredulity, and he knew his chance had gone.

But he was not prepared for her next words. In her horror for his deed, she had ceased to respect him; she had ceased to believe him; his earnest protestations of innocence of wantonness she thought were hypocritical--an impression strengthened by his statement that Kelso had been hired to kill him, and by his inability to show evidence to prove it. A shiver of repulsion, for him and his killings, ran over her.

"I believe you are lying, Randerson," she said, coldly.

He started, stiffened, and then stared, at her, his face slowly whitening. She had said words that, spoken by a man, would have brought about another of those killings that horrified her. She watched him, sensing for the first time something of the terrible emotions that sometimes beset men in tense situations but entirely unconscious of the fact that she had hurt him far more than any bullet could have hurt him.

Yet, aside from the whiteness of his face, he took the fatal thrust without a sign. His dreams, that had seemed to be so real to him while riding over the plains toward the ranchhouse, had been bubbles that she had burst with a breath. He saw the wrecks of them go sailing into the dust at his feet.

He had gazed downward, and he did not look up at once. When he did, his gaze rested, as though by prearrangement, on her. Her eyes were still cold, still disbelieving, and he drew himself slowly erect.

"I reckon you've said enough, ma'am," he told her quietly, though his voice was a trifle hoa.r.s.e. "A man couldn't help but understand that." He wheeled Patches and took off his hat to her. "I'll send Red Owen to see you, ma'am," he added. "I can recommend Red."

She was on her feet, ready to turn to go into the house, for his manner of receiving her insult had made her feel infinitely small and mean. But at his words she halted and looked at him.

"Why should you send Red Owen to see me? What do you mean?" she demanded.

"Why, you've made it pretty plain, ma'am," he answered with a low laugh, turning his head to look back at her. "I reckon you wouldn't expect me to go on workin' for you, after you've got so you don't trust me any more.

Red will make you a good range boss."

He urged Patches on. But she called to him, a strange regret filling her, whitening her cheeks, and Patches came again to a halt.

"I--I don't want Red Owen for a range boss," she declared with a gulp.

"If you are determined to quit, I--I suppose I cannot prevent it. But you can stay a week or two, can't you--until I can get somebody I like?"

He smiled gravely. "Why, I reckon I can, ma'am," he answered respectfully. "There won't be no awful hurry about it. I wouldn't want to disconvenience you."

And then he was off into the deepening haze of the coming evening, riding tall and rigid, with never a look behind to show her that he cared.

Standing in the doorway of the house, the girl watched him, both hands at her breast, her eyes wide, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed, until the somber shadows of twilight came down and swallowed him. Then, oppressed with a sudden sense of the emptiness of the world, she went into the house.

CHAPTER XXI

ONE TOO MANY

To no man in the outfit did Randerson whisper a word concerning the result of his visit to the ranchhouse--that he would cease to be the Flying W range boss just as soon as Ruth Harkness could find a man to replace him. He went his way, thoughtful, silent, grave, filled with somber thoughts and dark pa.s.sions that sometimes flashed in his eyes, but taking no man into his confidence. And yet they knew that all was not well with him. For in other days his dry humor, his love of wholesome fun, had shortened many an hour for them, and his serenity, in ordinary difficulties, had become a byword to them. And so they knew that the thing which was troubling him now was not ordinary.

They thought they knew what was troubling him. Kelso had been hired to take his life. Kelso had lost his own in the effort. That might have seemed to end it. But it had become known that Kelso had been a mere tool in the hands of an unscrupulous plotter, and until the plotter had been sent on the way that Kelso had gone there could be no end. Already there were whispers over the country because of Randerson's delay.

Of course, they would wait a reasonable time; they would give him his "chance." But they did not know what was holding him back--that deep in his heart lurked a hope that one day he might still make his dreams come true, and that if he killed Masten, Ruth's abhorrence of him and his deeds, already strong, could never be driven from her. If he lost this hope, Masten was doomed.

And during the second week following his latest talk with Ruth, the girl unconsciously killed it. He met her in the open, miles from the ranchhouse, and he rode toward her, deeply repentant, resolved to brave public scorn by allowing Masten to live.

He smiled gravely at her when he came close--she waiting for him, looking at him, unmoved. For she had determined to show him that she had meant what she had said to him.

"Have you found a new range boss, ma'am?" he said gently. He had hoped that she might answer lightly, and then he would have known that she would forgive him, in time.