He would smash her, find this Slivers, and hang him. To be spurned by a chit of a girl! He, Spur Treadwell, to be spurned for a homeless cowboy! Instinctively he knew who Slivers’ friend was—that boy, for he was the only new arrival on the ranch. His mind leaped back to that scene in the bunk house. They had been blind—both he and the twins. Well, it was not too late to mend that. The twins were in town; he would go there, start the wheels working that would pauperize Dot; and to-morrow the twins could attend to the boy.
With a savage haste, he saddled his horse and rode furiously toward town. Dot Reed watched him go, and a growing terror seized her. That night she tossed in her bed until long after midnight, trying to decide what was best to do. She remembered that one little slip Allen had made on that first day when she fed him, and she resolved to speak to him the first thing in the morning.
At dawn she was up and waiting impatiently for Allen to return from the cavvy. The sun had been up for an hour before she saw him riding toward the corral. She tried to walk slowly, but her feet would run. He was unsaddling when she reached him, and he turned and greeted her with a broad smile.
“Howdy, miss.”
“Do yuh know Slivers Hart? Are yuh his friend?” she blurted out without any preliminary.
“Yep, I answers. Yes, twice. My name is Jim Allen,” he answered simply, and then waited for her to go on.
She told him of what she had said to Spur the evening before and of her fears.
“Don’t worry none, miss—mebbe I can fool ’em still,” he said, grinning at her cheerfully.
“But yuh must go at once. He will bring those terrible twins back with him—they’ll kill yuh!”
“Not any. I’m so darn small I’m plumb hard to hit,” he said cheerfully. “If I has to run—yuh tell Bill McAllister to keep watch on Hog Butte, an’ if he sees smoke rings, first one, then three, to get what men he can trust an’ meet me where the trail rounds Hard Pan toward Boston Jack’s. Now, don’t yuh worry none,” he told her, and then walked toward the cookhouse.