“Where are you goin’, Banjo, with the country riled up this way, and you li’ble to be shot down any place by them rustlers?” Mrs. Chadron asked, looking at him appealingly, her apron ready to stem her gushing tears.
“I’ll go over to the mission and stay with Mother Mathews till I’m healed up. I’ll be welcome in that house; I’d be welcome there if I was blind, and had m’ back broke and couldn’t touch a string.”
“Yes, you would, Banjo,” Mrs. Chadron nodded.
“She’s married to a Injun, but she’s as white as a angel’s robe.”
“She’s a good soul, Banjo, as good as ever lived.”
Frances took advantage of Banjo’s trip to the reservation to send a note to her father apprising him of the tragedy at the ranch. Banjo buttoned it inside his coat, mounted his horse, and rode away.
Mrs. Chadron watched him out of sight with lamentations.
“I wish he’d ’a’ stayed—it ’d ’a’ been all right with Saul; Saul didn’t mean any harm by what he said. He’s the tender-heartedest man you ever saw, he wouldn’t hurt a body’s feelin’s for a farm.”
“I don’t believe Banjo is a man to hold a grudge very long,” Frances told her, looking after the retreating musician, her thoughts on him but hazily, but rather on a little highland bonnet with a bullet hole in its crown.