"I should think you would be glad of that!" exclaimed Hope. "It would be too bad if she didn't like you. I am sorry she is not in a more amiable mood, for I'd really like to talk with her; but perhaps I will be permitted to approach her later in the day."
"Oh, she'll be all right, now she's had her spell out," assured Long Bill.
"You speak of the round-up; why are you not with it?" queried the girl, with cool intent.
Long Bill brought his huge bandaged fist up before him, resting it upon the well one.
"I had a little accident th' other day," he explained, "an' hurt my hand powerful bad. It ain't goin' to be much use fer handlin' a rope fer quite a spell. Had to let the round-up move away without me." His voice grew plaintive.
She spoke quickly, with great compassion. "I am sorry! It seems too bad to see a great big fellow like you disabled. How did it happen?"
"Well, it was like this: I come over here th' other night an' got to settin' 'round here doin' nothin', so I thought I'd improve th' time an' clean this here gun o' mine. It's been a-needin' it powerful bad fer awhile back. I didn't know there was nary load in it until the blame thing went off an' I felt somethin' kind o' sudden an' hot piercin' my left hand. It was a fool trick to do, but it's the gospel truth, Miss."
"I heard—that is, the boys said something about a shooting affair up the road." She pointed toward the sheep-man's ranch. "I thought for a moment that perhaps you had been mixed up in that. I'm very glad to know that you were not, because you know it wasn't a very nice, manly thing to do to a defenseless stranger." Her cool eyes watched his nervous shifting. "You see I can't very well help hearing a lot of things around here. The girls hear things and they tell me, and then I am often forced to overhear the men and boys talking among themselves. It's none of my business, but yet I am glad to know that you were not one to set upon an innocent white man. I scarcely know this Mr. Livingston by sight, but he is a friend of Sydney's, my cousin, and they say,"—here she drew out her words slowly and impressively,—"that over in his country he has been in the army and is well versed in firearms; also that he has a small Gatling gun with him over here that shoots hundreds of shots a minute. So he really isn't so defenseless as he seems." This startled the man into open-mouth astonishment.
"I thought there was something!—I mean I thought, when I heard tell about the fracas over there, that there was somethin' like that in the wind," stammered the man.
Apparently Hope had told a deliberate untruth to force a confession from Long Bill, but yet it was a fact that she had heard something very similar. On the day before, Sunday, Jim McCullen had come to visit her. From his camp the noise of the shooting had been plainly heard, and through curiosity he and Carter had ridden to Livingston's ranch to inquire into it, but the sheep-man had been very reticent about the matter. Had told them only that there had been trouble with some breeds, and his herder had been killed. This old Jim repeated to Hope, adding that Livingston must have a Gatling gun concealed on his place, judging from the sound of the firing. So Hope in her effort to impress the tall cow-puncher had not used her imagination wholly.