“I reckon he’s goin’ to see Masten about that Kelso deal,” he said. “Somebody ought to put Masten wise.”
Kester grinned. “It’s bound to come,” he commented. “Let’s finish our game; it is your deal.”
On the mesa, Randerson urged Patches along the edge, over the trail that Ruth had taken when, months before, she had come upon Chavis and Kester at the declivity.
“Nothin’ would have happened, if it hadn’t been for Masten,” he told himself as he rode away. “Pickett wouldn’t have got fresh, an’ Kelso would have kept himself mighty shady. We’d have fought it out, square—me an’ Masten. I reckon I didn’t kill Pickett and Kelso; it was Masten that done it.”
He came, after a while, to the rock upon whick he had found Ruth lying on the night of the accident. And he sat and looked long at the grass plot where he had laid her when she had fainted.
“She looked like an angel, layin’ there,” he reminded himself, his eyes eloquent. “She’s too blamed good for that sneakin’ dude.”
He came upon the ruined boot, and memories grimmed his lips. “It’s busted—like my dreams,” he said, surveying it, ripped and rotting. “I reckon this is as good a place as any,” he added, looking around him.
And he dismounted, led Patches out of sight behind some high bushes that grew far back from the rocks; came back, stretched himself out on the grass plot, pulled his hat over his eyes and yielded to his gloomy thoughts. But after he had lain there a while, he spoke aloud:
“He’ll come this way, if he comes at all.”
With the memory of Randerson’s threat always before him, “if I ever lay eyes on you ag’in, I’ll go gunnin’ for you,” Masten rode slowly and watchfully. For he had felt that the words had not been idle ones, and it had been because of them that he had hired Kelso. And he went toward the ranchhouse warily, much relieved when he passed the bunkhouse, to find that Randerson was apparently absent. He intended to make this one trip, present to Ruth his excuses for staying away, and then go back to Chavis’ shack, there to remain out of Randerson’s sight, until he could devise another plan that, he hoped, would put an end to the cowpuncher who was forever tormenting him.