"This will have to do," she announced to the world at large. "I——"
"That depends on what you're getting it for, don't it?" inquired a voice behind her.
The insolence of it, the portent of it, brought Jerry to her feet. The precious water slopped wastefully. She had the sense of suspended animation as she looked up at the man sardonically observing her, then a sense of sudden, ungovernable panic. It was the late manager of the Double O with the bridle of his horse, The Piker, a big, lanky chestnut, in his left hand.
"Ranlett!"
Her own frightened whisper infuriated her. She had spoken to the man looming over her as seldom as she conveniently could; always she had distrusted him. She looked at him now as though seeing him for the first time. His black hair had a white streak from the middle of his forehead to his neck, which had earned him the soubriquet of "The Skunk," from the outfit; his eyes were steel gray, his thin-lipped mouth was nothing more than a crooked slit in his face, his chin was stubborn. Jerry's gaze returned to that feature and lingered. Apparently he was as amazed to see her as she had been startled at his appearance. She felt as though he had her wriggling under a microscope, pinned by the needle points in his eyes as he observed caustically:
"Well, now that you have sized me up it's my turn. What are you doing so far from the Double O alone? Perhaps you're not alone, what?" His attitude, the lines of his shoulders, his voice, bristled with suspicion.
The girl's mind indulged in one frenzied merry go-round before it settled down to constructive thinking. For the first time in her life she was squarely and uncompromisingly up against danger. Ranlett must not suspect that she had been in the shack, that Beechy was unbound. He might be in no way responsible for the condition in which she had found the ex-sergeant, but she couldn't take a chance with Carl's, "Ranlett—for the love of—did they get you too?" still echoing in her ears. If she could only get him away from the place. The throbbing pulse in her throat, which gave the impression of delicate wings beating futilely against bars, was the only sign of her agitation as she answered the man's question gayly.
"I don't wonder you ask, Mr. Ranlett, I'm a sight." She laid a finger cautiously against her scratched cheek and laughed. That laugh was a masterpiece of its kind. "I started for Bear Creek to inquire for Mrs. Carey, but yielded to the temptation to ride to the top of the hill. Pandora with her box has nothing on me for curiosity. I was born with an irresistible desire to look on the other side of things and places." The sudden narrowing of his eyes set her to wondering what false note she had struck, even as she went on:
"When I dismounted the better to peer down into this hollow, something gave a scream as of a thousand furies rampant." Her shudder was genuine. "The sound did direful things to Patches' nerves. He bolted down the hill. I bolted after him. I stumbled over something which must have been the keystone of the slope, or its twin, for the hillside gave way and landed me in an ignominious heap of dirt and gravel back of that shack. A rolling body gathers some scratches," she paraphrased flippantly as she felt again of her bruised face.
"I'll say you're some little talker, Mrs. Courtlandt, when—when you're frightened. You've never favored me with a word before," observed Ranlett insolently.