“Your face has big, ugly, red marks on it, and the skin on your knuckles is all torn,” she said.
“Patches throwed me twice, comin’ after you, ma’am,” he lied. “I plowed up the ground considerable. I’ve never knowed Patches to be so unreliable.”
She turned in the saddle and looked full at him. “That is strange,” she said, looking ahead again. “The men have told me that you are a wonderful horseman.”
“The men was stretchin’ the truth, I reckon,” he said lightly.
“Anyway,” she returned earnestly; “I thank you very much for coming for me.”
She said nothing more to him until he helped her down at the edge of the porch at the ranchhouse. And then, while Uncle Jepson and Aunt Martha were talking and laughing with pleasure at her return, she found time to say, softly to him:
“I really don’t blame you so much—about Pickett. I suppose it was necessary.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said gratefully.
He helped her inside, where the glare of the kerosene lamps fell upon him. He saw Uncle Jepson looking at him searchingly; and he caught Ruth’s quick, low question to Aunt Martha, as he was letting her gently down in a chair:
“Where is Willard?”