“I guess there won’t be any trouble. If there is, I can take care of myself.”
She saw that it was useless to insist further.
“Let me know if everything is all right,” she asked. “Light the light in the big cupola on the house when you get back—I can see it from my bedroom window—and then I shall know that nothing has happened. I shall be watching for it.”
“All right,” Custer promised, and they parted.
He wondered why she should be so perturbed about his plans for the night. There was something peculiar about that—something that he couldn’t understand or explain, except in accordance with a single hypothesis—a hypothesis which he scorned to consider, yet which rode his thoughts like a veritable Little Old Man of the Sea. Had he known the truth, it would all have been quite understandable; but how was he to know that Shannon Burke loved him?
When he reached the house, the ranch bookkeeper came to tell him that the Los Angeles operator had been trying to get him all afternoon.
“Somebody in L. A. wants to talk to you on important business,” said the bookkeeper. “You’re to call back the minute you get here.”
Five minutes later he had his connection. An unfamiliar voice asked if he were the younger Mr. Pennington.
“I am,” he replied.
“Some one cut your fence last Friday. You like to know who he is?”