"Far's I'm concerned I'm his meat," said McHale. "I'd have to come in, anyway, now. Sandy was a durn fool ever to hide out. I shouldn't have let him. Lucky for me I did, though."
"That's sense," said the sheriff. "You boys will find I'm all right to get on with. I haven't heard you say anything, McCrae?"
"I guess I don't need to say anything," said Sandy. "Casey came along with you, didn't he? That's good enough for me."
"I'm right obliged to him, too," said Dove. "He's sure saved me a lot of trouble. Lemme see that arm of yours, McHale. I savvy a little about them things. Anyway, I'll fix up some splints for it till you can get hold of a regular medicine man."
CHAPTER XXXII
"And so you're going to marry this Casey Dunne," said old Jim Hess. He and Clyde sat on the veranda at Chakchak, and they had been discussing the ranch, its owner, and the events that had led up to his absence.
"Yes, Uncle Jim, I'm going to marry him."
"Well," said the big railway man, "making allowance for your natural partiality, his stock seems to be worth about par. I'll know better when I've had a look at him. I tell you one thing, I'm glad he isn't a foreigner. I never liked those fellows who tagged about after you. This country can produce as good men as you'll find. The others weren't my sort. All right in their way, perhaps, but they seemed to go too much on family and ancestry. That's good enough, too, but it seems to me that the ancestors of some of them must have been a blamed sight better men than they were. After all, a girl doesn't marry the ancestor. Dunne seems to have hoed his own row. That's what I did. I'm prepared to like him. Only I don't want you to make any mistake."
"There's no mistake, Uncle Jim," she said, patting his big hand. "Casey's a man. You will like him. Look away out there where the dust is rising! Aren't those men on horseback? Yes, they are. It must be Casey coming home." Her pleasure was apparent in her voice.
The dust cloud resolved itself into four mounted men and three pack animals. They moved slowly, at a walk almost, the dust puffing up from the hoofs drifting over and enveloping them.