"Harshly!" exclaimed Lowell. "Harshly! Why, if you practiced revolver shooting on me an hour before breakfast every morning, or if you used me for a doormat here at the Greek Letter Ranch, I couldn't think anything but lovingly of you."
"Oh!" cried Helen, clapping her hands over her ears and running up the porch steps, as Lowell turned to his automobile. "You've almost undone all the good you've accomplished to-day."
"Thanks for that word 'almost,'" laughed Lowell.
"Then I'll make it 'quite,'" flung Helen, but her words were lost in the shifting of gears as Lowell started back to the agency.
That night Helen dreamed that Bill Talpers, on hands and knees, was moving like a misshapen shadow about the yard in the moonlight picking up the letter which she had torn to pieces.
CHAPTER XIII
Sheriff Tom Redmond sat in Lowell's office at the agency, staring grimly across at the little park, where the down from the cottonwood trees clung to the grass like snow. The sheriff had just brought himself to a virtual admission that he had been in the wrong.
"I was going to say," remarked Tom, "that, in case you catch Jim McFann, perhaps the best thing would be for you to sort o' close-herd him at the agency jail here until time for trial."
Lowell looked at the sheriff inquiringly.