Jessie turned on the dog: “Go home! go home, sir!” she cried, stamping her foot. Guard slunk off, his tail between his legs, and his bright eyes fixed reproachfully on me. I threw the gun with its trappings at the cowboy’s feet. “There, take them! You can shoot me if you like. I threw away your whiskey.”
“I wouldn’t ’a’ cared a bit if you’d ’a’ drunk it, as I reckoned you did,” Jim returned with a light laugh, as he picked up the gun. “I ain’t agoin’ to hurt you; tole you so in the first place. Got your little handkercher yet, I have. Here’s the coat.” He tossed it into Jessie’s outstretched arms. Clasping it tightly to her breast she started quickly down the trail.
Following her for a few steps before taking my way over the ridge, I observed that her hands were wandering swiftly over the coat, from pocket to pocket; as if seeking something. Suddenly the expression of intense anxiety on her face gave way to one of unspeakable relief. She turned around quickly and caught my hand: “Come on, you poor, abused girl! Let’s run, I am so anxious about Ralph.”
“I’m glad you’ve got some affection left for him!” I retorted scornfully. “It seemed to me from the way you’ve gone on, that you cared less for either of us than for father’s old coat.”
Jessie gave the hand that lay limply in her’s an ecstatic little squeeze. “Our money, Leslie, is all in a little bag that is pinned in the lining of this old coat; it’s here now, all safe.”
I could only gasp, as she had done before me, with a difference of names, “Oh, Jessie!”
“Yes,” Jessie repeated, nodding, “and it’s quite safe, I can feel it. Our cowboy friend did not have time to find it. I only hope that Ralph has not got into mischief.” He had not. I was obliged to leave Jessie and go over the ridge for the cows, but she told me, when I presently followed her into the house, that she had found Ralph still contentedly destroying his picture book.