“Why didn’t he quite kill you if he wanted to?” asked Westcott, incredulously.
“Hell! I dunno,” was the frank admission; “I’d a done him good an’ plenty, you bet; but he didn’t, an’ here I am.”
Westcott sat his horse, waiting, with an elaborate assumption of patience.
“Here’s what I’m thinkin’ of,” began Broome, talking fast. “I’m busted, Mr. Westcott: I ain’t got even a bronc o’ my own; but if I c’d git anybody to grub-stake me, I’d go up the railroad to where Gard left that burro—I know the place all right—an’ I’d git ’er; I’d know ’er by a big scar on one shoulder. An’ you bet the hash once she was out on the desert she’d strike fer that there camp in the mountains. She’s that kind. He tamed her out o’ the wild, he said, an’ she never knowed no other place.”
“Then what would you do?”
“Be Johnnie on the spot,” replied Broome. “Git in an’ dig. In the same place, mebby.”
“Do you mean jump it?” The question was put in a low tone.
“I ain’t sayin’ what I mean; but I mean all ’t ’s necessary to git back the rights that feller done me out of.”
Westcott considered, looking thoughtfully out on the desert.
“It’s risky,” was his comment, at length.