Bryant leaned back, eyes squinting toward the fire, lips pursed in thought. Penny tried to study her uncle's eyes. Was it true that they were failing? If so, how could he have fired with such amazing accuracy? She remembered what Jeb had said just after the shooting: "Men with eyes that ain't no good can't shoot a rifle."
Bryant Cavendish was grumbling in an undertone.
"Run this place all my life. Built 'er up from nothin' to one o' the best ranches in Texas. Now I can't turn without bein' told how tuh run my own affairs by every saddle tramp that drifts in here fer work."
"Why did you mention Yuma?" asked Penny.
"I had a row with that upstart this afternoon."
"Oh—" Penny lifted her eyebrows questioningly "—you did?"
"As if I didn't know what's goin' on, on my own property. Why, that pipsqueak from Arizona tried tuh tell me that I was hirin' outlaws! I told him tuh mind his own damn business an' when I wanted advice from him I'd ask him fer it."
Penny calculated that the argument must have been previous to her talk with Yuma, because Bryant and the blond cowhand had had no chance to talk after the shooting, which came almost immediately following her discussion at the corral. This, then, could not have been the cause of the strange change in Yuma's manner. Yuma had been almost antagonistic when she had met him beside Mort's fallen body.
"But, Uncle Bryant," said Penny seriously, "are you sure you haven't any outlaws working here? You might not know them, you see, and Yuma having been outside the Basin until just recently...."
"That'll do," snapped the old man. "I'll run this ranch without help."