Simon turned and handed his reins to Nails.
“You can put Smoky on my horse — I’ll be walking from here on.”
Then, as he must have expected, Jean Morland was the only one who had to be answered. She came and took his arm while the men were picking Smoky up and mounting him for his last meaningless ride, and the Saint was finishing his cigarette and staring over the shadowy terrain of the J-Bar-B.
“You’ve got quite a way of taking charge, haven’t you, cowboy?”
“Everybody knows what has to be done,” he tried to tell her. “Somebody just has to say it.”
“I suppose that usually turns out to be you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re really the boss, when your father’s away. But you haven’t been here so long, and — well, you could have too much on your mind.”
“That’s just it,” she said, and this was not what he had expected at all. “I have got too much on my mind. And I wouldn’t be any good. And I know I ought to be left out. I don’t want to be the stupid wench in the story who gets heroic and keeps dashing in where she doesn’t belong and messing everything up. I know you wouldn’t have any use for that. I just wish I knew why I was so sure that you know so much.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and faced her.
“I think Hank will tell you about that one day.”