“I don’t think I shall ever get your viewpoint,” she declared.
“Well,” he said, “Pickett was bound to try to get me. Do you think that if I’d gone to the sheriff at Las Vegas, an’ told him about Pickett, he’d have done anything but poke fun at me? An’ that word would have gone all over the country—that I was scared of Pickett—an’ I’d have had to pull my freight. I had to stand my ground, ma’am. Mebbe I’d have been a hero if I’d have let him shoot me, but I wouldn’t have been here any more to know about it. An’ I’m plumb satisfied to be here, ma’am.”
“How did you come to hear about me not getting home?” she asked.
“I’d rode in to see Catherson. I couldn’t see him—because he wasn’t there. Then I come on over to the ranchhouse, an’ Uncle Jepson told me about you not comin’ in.”
“Was Mr. Masten at the ranchhouse?”
He hesitated. Then he spoke slowly. “I didn’t see him there, ma’am.”
She evidently wondered why it had not been Masten that had come for her.
They were near the house when she spoke again:
“Did you have an accident today, Randerson?”
“Why, ma’am?” he asked to gain time, for he knew that the moonlight had been strong enough, and that he had been close enough to her, to permit her to see.