“I am. I been lying to you. You ain’t got no cows left, hardly. Our range has been combed and skinned; for two years it’s been going on—I don’t know how long before. You ain’t got no sixty-five nor fifty thousand cows. You’re lucky if you can put up a herd of four thousand. We’ve all lied to you. We couldn’t tell you the truth. Ma’am, this outfit would all lay down and die for you. They’d do almost anything but tell you the truth. We couldn’t do that. We didn’t have the nerve.”
The girl sank back, her face pale.
“Why, Jim! I didn’t really know!”
“No, ma’am. Some gang’s at work in here, and north and west of here—far north as Palo Pinto. We’ve been away, enduring the war and after the war. We’re all broke, us Texans. But in Austin is plenty people ain’t broke none a-tall. We don’t know nothing, can’t prove nothing. All I say is, in Austin is plenty people ain’t broke a-tall.”
“You mean the Yankee treasurer?”
“I don’t say out loud what I do mean. All I know is, our range is skinned; and I know we’re up against a strong game. That’s why, ma’am, looking for the best of Del Sol and what yore paw meant for her, and looking for yore own good interests, too, I been advising you to get married. That’d simple up a lot of things.
“You see, then we could settle down and raise cows. We could build up the range again. They ain’t going to be so brash about things when they know they’s a real man in charge of Del Sol. But a orphant is easy picking for a man like Rudabaugh and his gang of carpetbagging thieves.”
“You mean Rudabaugh?”
“I shore do. In Austin, we don’t know what’s going on. In office and out, there’s a new gang in there. They’re organized fer to steal this here whole state, lock, stock and barrel. They don’t stop at nothing. They allow the war ain’t never done; that us Texans ain’t never surrendered; that Lee’s still a enemy; and that all this state is fair picking fer men that wasn’t never borned nor raised in Texas, orphants and all. They got wide idees, yes. But they ain’t idees that was borned in Texas, ma’am.”
“And are we helpless, Jim?”