“I’ll turn off right here, and right now.  I’ve got a curiosity, John,” and his voice was harder than Winifred Waverly had ever heard it, “to know a thing or two about the way my horse went lame.  I’m going to sling my saddle on your roan and take a little ride back to Harte’s.  Maybe I can pick up that other jasper’s trail in the canon back there.”

The two men went down to the stable, and while the rancher watered and fed the pony Thornton roped the big roan in the fenced-in pasture.  Ten minutes after he had come to the Smith place he had saddled and ridden back along the trail toward Harte’s.

The two women in the cabin looked up as Smith came in.

“Where’s Mr. Thornton?” his wife asked.

“He’s gone back,” Smith told her.  He drew out his chair, sat down and filled his pipe.  Before Mrs. Smith’s surprise could find words the girl had started to her feet, crying quickly: 

“Gone back!  Where?”

“To Harte’s.  A man knifed his horse back there.”  He stopped, lighted his pipe, and then said slowly, with much deep thoughtfulness, “If I was that man I’d ride some tonight!  I’d keep right on ridin’ until I’d put about seven thousand miles between me an’ Buck Thornton.  An’ then ... well, then, I guess I’d jest naturally dig a hole an’ crawl in it so deep nothin’ but my gun stuck out!”

“What did he say?” she asked breathlessly.

“That’s jest it, Miss.  He didn’t say much!”

CHAPTER XI

THE BEDLOE BOYS

All thoughts of denouncing Buck Thornton before these people fled before the girl had followed the rancher’s wife into the cabin.  They spoke of him only in tones warm with friendship and with something more than mere friendship, an admiration that was tinged with respect.  They had known him since first he had come into this country, and although that had been only a little more than a year ago, they had grown to know him as men and women in these far-out places come to know each other, swiftly, intimately.

He was a favourite topic of conversation and they talked of him naturally, readily, and Mrs. Smith, fluently.  She recounted, not guessing how eagerly the girl was listening to every word, many an episode which in the aggregate had given him the reputation he bore throughout these wild miles of cattle land, the reputation of a man who was hard, hard as rock “on the outside,” as she put it, hard inside, too, when they drove him to it, but naturally as soft-hearted as a baby.  She wished she had a boy like him!  Why, when she and John hit hard luck, last year, what with the cattle getting diseased first and her and John getting laid up next, flat of their backs with the grip, that man was an angel in britches and spurs if there ever was an angel in anything!  He’d nursed them and cooked for them, and lifted her out of her bed while he made it up himself, just as smooth and nice as you could have done, Miss.  And he rode clean into town for a doctor, and brought him out and a lot of store stuff that was nice for sick folks to eat.  And he’d paid the doctor, too, and laughed and said he’d come some day and borry the money back when he got busted playing poker!