“I’m not going to scold him!” laughed Trent, ruffling the dog’s ears. “It’s many a long month since Buff needed a scolding. He didn’t drive the rabbit this way. The rabbit drove itself, before Buff could choose the direction. He——”
“Buff is splendid protection for you, isn’t he?” she broke in, a tinge of nervousness in her soft voice.
“Why, personally, I don’t stand in any great need of protection,” he smiled. “I’m not exactly a timid little flower. But he protects the farm and the house and the livestock as efficiently as a machine-gun company could. He’s a born watchdog.”
Buff, realising he was under discussion, sat down in the road between the man and the girl. He was wriggling with self-consciousness and fanning the dust into a little whirlwind with the lightning sweeps of his plumy tail; as he grinned expectantly from one to the other of the speakers. But the collie’s grin found no answer on Ruth Hammerton’s flower-tinted face. The girl’s eyes had grown grave, and there was a tinge of uneasiness in them.
“I hope you’re right,” she began, hesitantly, “in saying you don’t need any protection. And probably I’m foolish. But that’s why I rode out here this morning.”
“To protect me?” he asked quizzically, yet perplexed at her new bearing.
“To risk your thinking me impertinent,” she evaded, “by mixing into something that doesn’t concern me.”
“Anything that concerns me,” he said as she hesitated again, “concerns you, too; so far as you’ll let it. What’s the matter?”
She drew a long breath, knit her dark brows, and plunged into the distasteful mission that had brought her to the Trent farm.
“In the first place,” she began, “do you know two men named Con Hegan and Billy Gates?”