"Not so often as the expected. Mont, what made you leave us so abruptly to-night?"
"O, I can hardly tell," replied the other, carelessly flinging one leg over the other and puffing at his cigar, as though the matter was of no importance.
"I know; you believed that if you stayed here you would increase the peril to us."
"You've hit it exactly; that was it."
"What sort of friends do you take us to be?"
"That isn't it; rather, what sort of friend would I be, thus knowingly to place you and your mother and sister in danger? If those rustlers knew where I am, a dozen would be here before sunrise."
"What of it? We are ready for them."
"That's a poor answer to my statement; you had enough of that woeful business yesterday; they hold me in such hatred that they would burn down your place, if they could reach me in no other way."
"And yet you propose to stay in Wyoming and have it out with them?"
"I haven't said that," remarked Sterry, more thoughtfully; "I may soon leave for a more civilized section, much as I hate to play the seeming coward; but what you said about my parents, brothers and sisters at home, gave me something to think over while riding across the prairie to-night."