It was accompanied by a short laugh, rich in grave humor:
“I reckon you wouldn’t compare your shootin’ with mine, ma’am. Me havin’ so much experience, an’ you not bein’ able to hit a soap-box proper?”
She bowed her head and murmured a fervent:
“Thank God!”
Randerson caught Hagar’s gaze and looked significantly from Ruth to the door. The girl accepted the hint, and coaxed Ruth to accompany her to the door and thence across the porch to the clearing. Randerson watched them until, still walking, they vanished among the trees. Then he took Chavis’ body out. Later, when Ruth and Hagar returned, he was sitting on the edge of the porch, smoking a cigarette.
To Ruth’s insistence that Hagar come with her to the house, the girl shook her head firmly.
“Dad will be back, most any time. He’ll feel a heap bad, I reckon. An’ I’ve got to be here.”
A little later, riding back toward the Flying W—when they had reached the timber-fringed level where, on another day, Masten had received his thrashing, Ruth halted her pony and faced her escort.
“Randerson,” she said, “today Uncle Jepson told me some things that I never knew—about Masten’s plots against you. I don’t blame you for killing those men. And I am sorry that I—I spoke to you as I did—that day.” She held out a hand to him.
He took it, smiling gravely. “Why, I reckoned you never meant it,” he said.