“Hell!” He spluttered in stark surprise. He stared at the demijohn, stared at the smiling Thady Shea. “Hell! I thought——”
Thady Shea laughed. It was a deep, sonorous laugh.
“I couldn’t stand it, Ross,” he said. “That cursed jug was too much for me. So I emptied out the whiskey and filled it with water, and went to work. I’m sorry about the whiskey—I’ll pay you back.”
“Damn the whiskey!” roared Fred Ross, delightedly, and wiped his lips. “Come on back to the shack and let’s eat!”
For the first time in long days, the two men talked over their meal. They talked of the world outside, talked of ranch gossip, talked of the war and the government and the high price of wool. Ross meant to run some sheep up at the head of the cañon, and discoursed on the project at length. Not until their pipes were going, and the red afterglow was shrouding the fading day, did he mention what he had learned at Datil.
“Heard something over to the hotel,” he mentioned, casually. “They were talking about you. It appears that Abel Dorales has called off the sheriff and withdrawn all charges agin’ you. He’s lookin’ for you his own self, I hear. Makin’ it a personal matter.”
Thady Shea drew a deep breath. Nothing to fear from the law, then! The more personal menace of Abel Dorales he did not consider at all.
“I’ll tell you what happened—if you don’t mind,” he said, diffidently. It was the first time, since that day when he had felled Ross with the cup, that personalities had been touched upon between them.
He told his story. Ross made no comment whatever; in that story he perceived that Thady Shea was a queer, impulsive child, a man whose fear and reason were overruled by his impulses, a man whose primitive soul arose in a lonely grandeur of sincerity, of absolute and wonderful sincerity. Ross felt awed, as a man feels awed when confronted by the mystery of a child’s soul.
The name of Mehitabel Crump meant nothing to the rancher; he had perhaps heard of her in past years, but had forgotten her name. When Thady Shea fell silent, Ross knocked the dottle from his pipe and filled it anew.