“I didn’t think she had it in her to feel so much about anything. She’s heartbroken,” Nona said. “Doc, it appears, meant a lot to her. She just babbles about him.”
“Everybody seems to know that but you,” Rock told her.
“I don’t understand it,” Nona said slowly. “Doc—oh, well, I guess he made love to her, same as he did to me.”
“You blame him?” Rock inquired. “She’s attractive. Offhand, I’d say she loved this rider of yours a heap. You didn’t have any use for him except in his capacity as a cowpuncher. Sometimes, I’ve noticed, a man craves affection. If he can’t find it one place he’ll look elsewhere. Maybe he was in love with you both. You’re funny, anyhow. You didn’t want him, yourself. But it seems to jar you because he consoled himself with another girl.”
“It isn’t that,” she replied in a bewildered sort of fashion. “Why should he lie to me? Why should he quarrel with Elmer Duffy about me—make an issue of me—if—if—”
“I don’t know. I do know that I may have a man-size quarrel with Elmer, myself, now, if Buck Walters makes a few more public cracks about my run-in with Mark. Elmer’s apt to brood over that, and I’m handy if he concludes it’s up to him to get action over a grievance. And it’s likely he will.”
“What’ll you do, if he does?” she said anxiously.
“Oh, take it as it comes. There’s something fishy to me about all this upheaval. Of course I can savvy why Buck Walters wanted to get your man, Doc. Alice would be reason enough. Buck’s face gave him away. But I somehow don’t believe that’s the whole answer. Perhaps both Elmer and Buck are such honest, God-fearing cattlemen that the very idea of rustling would make them froth at the mouth simultaneously. But I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe for a single instant that Doc Martin had anything to do with any rustling whatever,” Nona declared. “I don’t care what these Burrises said, or anybody.”
“I’m not an awful lot interested in that, now,” Rock remarked thoughtfully. “It would appear from the way these fellows were ready to act that there has been rustling. Duffy wouldn’t back a play like that just to satisfy either his own or Buck Walters’ grudge. Between the Seventy Seven and the Maltese Cross, ranging around forty thousand cattle, a few rustled calves by the Goosebill don’t cut so much figure, except as an excuse for action. No; ‘there’s more in this than meets the eye,’ as Shakespeare or some other wise gazabo said once. You have lost calves, yourself.”