"Say, now," Garnett put in, "I wouldn't pull my gun on Ludlum yet awhile. Don't look to me like a stockman would bother himself with such a job. He'd run off a hundred head mebbe into the mountains, but not this. I reckon I'd better ride over there and take a look at those hides. I could mebbe get a line on something."
While Garnett was gone, Harry started the supper fire and set the table; then in a clean blue apron, she waited expectantly for his report.
"I'd never say Ludlum done that job," he announced decisively the moment he returned. "I'd swear to his brand on one hide there at any rate, and mebbe more. There's a good twenty-five skins in the bunch, and you didn't lose more'n a dozen critters all told, did you?"
"Just a dozen," she answered, "one of them only lately. It's hide wasn't there."
"And Ludlum's been gone out of here six weeks?"
"Two months. But if he didn't do it, who did? Who?"
"That's your next job, I reckon, finding out. If one of your critters has turned up missin' this last month, then I'd sure count Ludlum out and smell a fresh trail for the thief. I'd quit frettin' myself right now, anyhow. Rob'll be along soon and mebbe he can fit this puzzle game together."
His kind heart was distressed at the thought of leaving the girl alone with her gloomy thoughts, but he knew that she would scorn the idea of his staying. Being left alone was one of the things that the women of the cattle country took for granted, and Harry, he knew, was not a "quitter."
But when he was leaving he held her hand in his hard grasp a second or two longer than usual, and his blue eyes tried to say more than his tongue ever had. Perhaps Harry understood their meaning, for she tilted her head and smiled.