“Goodness, yes. Here.” Nona came around the table, dragging a chair to him against his protest. “What happened, anyhow?”
“Plenty.” Rock sank thankfully on the seat. “I went up to the Sweet Grass with that outfit, looking for something, and I found a heap.”
“Trouble?”
“Lots of it. What I really came up here to tell you, Nona, is that Charlie got shot,” Rock said wearily. “I’m sorry, because I partly got him into the mix-up. He knew where these hidden corrals were, and he went along to show us. But he has lived it out three days now, and he seems strong. He’s a nervy, husky kid. I think he will be all right. I sent him on to Benton in a wagon. He will have the best of everything that can do him good. He helped us clean up a dirty mess.”
“Tell me about it,” Nona begged. “All about it, please.”
Rock began at the beginning and told her briefly, but clearly, all that had happened since the day Uncle Bill Sayre called him into Fort Worth and laid a mission on his shoulders, down to the present. She sat staring at him, mute, impassive-faced, but with a queer glow in her eyes.
“I am glad that man is dead,” she said at last. “Now we can all go about our business, easy in our minds.”
“Can we?” Rock said. “I wonder? What was Elmer so earnest and so eloquent about when I came in?”
Nona flushed.
“Oh, pestering me to marry him, as usual,” she said. “He makes me tired.”