"Quite likely."
"Now Bryant won't be able tuh guard Miss Penny no more, bein' that he's dead."
"I didn't say that he was dead."
"Then he ain't dead?"
"No."
"How close to it is he?"
"There's a good chance for him to recover. I have him hidden in a cave in the Gap."
Yuma reflected on the things that he'd been told. He muttered half aloud and then quite suddenly went berserk. He snatched off his hat, whirled it about his head several times, then threw it on the ground. He jumped on it with both feet while he shouted at the top of his voice. His face was livid with blind rage and fury. He swore with the sincerity of a hen with fresh-hatched chicks and the vocabulary of a mule skinner. He called himself an addleheaded jackass and a crackbrained fool in Mexican as well as English. He berated his bungling, fumbling, thoughtless notions and cursed himself for trying to help Penny by the "loco" means he'd used. He ranted, raved, and raged because he'd taken blame that properly belonged to a double-dyed, limp-brained, stone-faced, soulless old son of a three-tongued rattler, meaning Bryant Cavendish. He declared with rare vehemence that Bryant deserved boiling in hot coal oil, then skinning alive.
Before he ran out of things to say, his breath gave out and he was forced to stop and gasp. His face was red, his eyes were bloodshot from emotion. He grabbed the front of the Lone Ranger's shirt in one huge hand.
"Listen," he said breathlessly, "listen tuh me. I lied when I said I was the leader o' them murderin' skunks an' cattle rustlers. It's Bryant that's the leader. I only thought tuh—"