His listeners both looked very much surprised.
“Why, how come that?” Mrs. Heger inquired. “You didn’t say as how you’d seen Meg, all the time I was talkin’ about her.”
Dan might have replied that he had not had an opportunity to say much of anything. But to an interested audience he related the recent occurrence.
“Pshaw, that’s queer now!” Pa Heger scratched his gray head back of one ear, which Dan was to learn was a habit with him when he was puzzled.
“You say the mountain lion was crouched to spring at you? Then it must o’ been that she had some young near. They’re cowards when it comes to humans, them lions are. They kill sheep an’ calves an’ deer, an’ all the little wild critters, but they don’t often attack a man. They’ll trail ’em for hours, curious, sort of, I reckon, keepin’ out of sight. Makes you feel mighty uncomfortable to know one of them big critters is prowlin’ arter you, whatever his intentions may be. But that ’un, now, you was mentionin’, I’ll walk back wi’ you, when you go, an’ take a look at it. Thar’s a bounty paid for ’em by the ranchers. An’ if young air near by, there’ll be no time better for puttin’ an end to ’em.”
Ma Heger glanced often toward the wooded mountain beyond Meg’s “Bot’ny Gardens.” Then to her husband she said: “I reckon Meg knows thar’s company, an’ that’s why she’s stayin’ so long. She said to me, ‘Ma, I ain’t agoin’ to school today,’ says she. ‘I reckon I’ll get some more specimens.’“
At that the man looked up quickly, evident alarm in his clear blue eyes.
“Did she say anything about havin’ seen that skulkin’ Ute? Has he been pesterin’ her? The day arter she’s given him money, she don’ dare go to school, fearin’ he’ll be rarin’ drunk wi’ fire-water an’ waylay her. If ever I come up wi’ that coyote, I’ll—I’ll——”
The wife tried to quiet the increasing anger of her spouse.
“Pa Heger,” she said, “you’re alarmin’ yerself needless. That Ute knows the sheriff gave you power to jail him, an’ he’s mos’ likely gone to whar his tribe is.”