His father gazed out through the barred window, across the rolling, wooded slopes of the Gros Ventre.
“Blamed if you don’t talk like you meant it, son. I know one person who wont ask more than your say-so to believe it, and that’s your sister Margaret.”
Otis was on the point of asking if Mariel had faith in his innocence, but a sudden feeling of diffidence restrained the question even as his lips were framing it. After all, why should Mariel, a comparative stranger, have any reason to vary from what seemed to be the opinion of the entire community? He kept silent.
Sterling Carr went on: “It may take every penny I’ve got, son, but I’ll see you come clear of this charge. There’s more ways than one of handling a thing like this. But why in the name of Sam Hill did you come back here and give yourself up after you’d gotten away once? That’s what I can’t figure out.”
“I tell you I promised Lafe I wouldn’t try to escape,” Otis replied simply.
His father snorted. “You’re mighty p’ticular. But I don’t know but that I’m glad you done it, even if it turns out that it costs me a pretty wad to clear you. I would hate to think you’d light out after you’d passed your word. Do you know why? Because it aint like a man that’d shoot down an unarmed man, to give himself up to the Sheriff after he was free, just because he’d told him he’d do it. That aint very clear, but I guess you know what I mean. Well, so long, son. Don’t you worry, ’cause the old man aint the kind to lay down just ’cause he draws to a bum hand.”
Otis gripped his father’s hand.
“And say, Dad—if you’re going back to the ranch, I wish you’d take Pie-face with you. I guess they haven’t got any charge to hold him on.”
When his father had departed, Otis threw himself down on his bunk to go over again and again the events of the day, seeking a clue which might lead to the solution of the mysterious slaying of Ranger Fyffe. Before the torrent of circumstance which was sweeping him onward toward what seemed certain destruction, he felt more helpless than he had while being tossed about in the flood of Red Rock creek.