He had not told her of his conviction that Shoz-Dijiji and the dread Apache Devil were one and the same; and he did not tell her, for he knew that it would but tend to further assure her of the guilt of the Apache. There were two reasons why he did not tell her. One was his loyalty to the savage enemy who had befriended him and who might still be living. The other was his belief that Wichita Billings had harbored a warmer feeling than friendship for the war chief of the Be-don-ko-he, and King was not the type of man who takes an unfair advantage of a rival.
Perhaps it galled this scion of an aristocratic Boston family to admit, even to himself, that an untutored savage might have been his rival in seeking the hand of a girl; but he did not permit the suspicion to lessen his sense of gratitude to Shoz-Dijiji or dim the genuine respect he felt for the courage and honor of that savage warrior.
For a time the two sat in silence, Wichita busy with her revolver, King feasting his eyes upon her regular profile.
“Everything on the ranch running smoothly?” he asked, presently.
Wichita shook her head. “Not like they did when Dad was here,” she admitted. “The boys are good to me, but it’s not like having a man at the head of things. Some of them don’t like ‘Smooth’ and I’ve lost several of my best men on that account. A couple of them quit, and ‘Smooth’ fired some. I can’t interfere. As long as he’s foreman he’s got to be foreman. The minute the boys think I’ve lost confidence in him he won’t have any more authority over them than a jack rabbit.”
“Are you satisfied with him?” asked King.
“Well—he sure knows his business,” she replied; “you’d have to hunt a month of Sundays before you found a better cow man; but he can’t get the work out of his men. They don’t feel any loyalty for him. They used to cuss Dad; and I’ve seen more than one of them pull a gun on him, but they’d work their fool heads off for him. They’d get sore as pups and quit; but they always came back—if he’d take them—and when he died, Ad, I saw men crying that I bet hadn’t cried before since they were babies.”
“That is like the old man,” said King, thinking of his troop commander. “Gosh! How I have hated that fellow—and while I’m hating him I can’t help but love him. There are men like that, you know.”
“They are the real men, I guess,” mused Wichita; “they don’t grow on every sage brush, not by a long shot.”
“Why don’t you sell out, Chita?” King asked her. “This is no job for a girl—it’s a man’s job, and you haven’t the man for it.”