Her answer, or the manner of it, struck Jonas as peculiar.
"Extra herder or two?" he suggested.
"One of the boys who was out at the ranch told somebody in town that there was somebody out there. The regular herder was up at the county-seat and had n't got back."
Mrs. Norton, now that she had boggled, by surprise, into the acknowledgment that she knew anything whatever about the matter, felt herself in a problematical position. She did not know whether his question had been accidental or not; it sounded as if he knew; possibly he had put it as a feeler to discover whether she knew. In which case the subject became rather difficult; she did not know whether to dissemble, nor how much to dissemble, nor how to do it.
Jonas, his curiosity aroused, persevered with more inquiries. Mrs. Norton, after answering with a few vague references to Tuck Reedy's report, suddenly made a bald evasion of the subject; she went back without ceremony to the subject of rocks. Jonas had a new feeling that there was something peculiar about the matter.
"And so I was thinking," continued Mrs. Norton, "that we had better return them pretty soon. It was really an improper thing for us to do—though we did not particularly think of it at the time. If he came home and found the rockery gone he might not like it."
"Steve is rather peculiar, some ways," remarked Jonas.
"Is he? In what way?"
This remark of his had seemed to bear upon the hidden subject. She had hope of receiving moral enlightenment from the masculine standpoint.
"Mostly about rocks. Did you ever hear about the time I hauled that tombstone for him?"