The gate towards the road was not locked, nor even shut. Jonah drove through it and was in the middle of the camp before Grannis noticed his arrival.
"Can I speak to you privately, Harvey?" asked his sister, as he arose and came forward to greet her.
"No, ma'am," he answered with emphatic loudness. "Say your say--Everybody's welcome to hear it. I've done nothing I'm ashamed of."
The indignant blood rushed to Mrs. Spooner's pale face. She had no wish to make a scene. She pushed aside the rug and stepped quietly from her phaeton. Jonah held the lines over Shasta, looking straight ahead of him. The circle of cowboys drew closer, listening curiously, eagerly, most of them with angry distaste, yet hopeful that the little woman would speak up to their boss.
And she did. She told him pretty plainly what she thought of his behavior. She began with the sale of the ranch to John Spooner and the verbal agreement concerning the use of this tank or water-hole which had never in the memory of man gone dry. Her voice faltered when she spoke of her husband's absence and danger, the doubt which Harvey had expressed of his brother-in-law's ever returning to his family. She mentioned the conduct of her daughters as highly creditable to them.
At this point Harvey, enraged by being reproved when he fully expected entreaties, broke in.
"Well, those same high-spirited girls of yours have been cutting wires, ma'am--and wire-cutting is a penitentiary offense. Jake over there, saw a girl snooping along the fence and bending over working at it, and when he got down there three wires were clipped in two, and swinging. That's the way your girls show their high-spirit!"
"I don't believe it!" exclaimed Mrs. Spooner indignantly. "Neither Ruth nor Elizabeth would do such a thing. They fully understand that it's a crime before the law--though surely what you are doing, Harvey, is a crime before Heaven. Maybe you think I cut the wires?"
"No, no, Jennie," began Harvey, somewhat abashed, yet still thoroughly angry. "You hold on and I'll catch the minx in the act--we've got three men hidden down by the fence now--Here they come!"
There was a stir off in the darkness where the fence cutting had been. Mrs. Spooner put her hand to her heart and gasped, praying silently that neither of her girls had been driven into reckless reprisals. She had talked to them about it, again and again as she did to Roy, begging them to remember that two wrongs never made a right. Then she turned away and hid her eyes against the phaeton edge.