“A man that builds trail, lays bridges, burns brush, fights fire, rides the round-up, and covers seventy-five miles of trail every week on eighty dollars per month, and feeds himself and his horses, isn’t what I would call enjoying a soft snap.”
“What do you do it for?”
“God knows! I’ve been asking myself that question all day to-day.”
“This playin’ game warden has some outs, too. That was a wild crowd last night. The town is the same old hell-hole it was when I knew it years ago. Fine girl of Lize Wetherford’s. She blocked me all right.” He smiled wanly. “I certainly was on my way to the green timber when she put the bars up.”
Ross made no comment, and the other went on, in a tone of reminiscent sadness. “Lize has changed terribly. I used to know her when she was a girl. Judas Priest! but she could ride and shoot in those days!” His eyes kindled with the memory of her. “She could back a horse to beat any woman that ever crossed the range, but I didn’t expect to see her have such a skein of silk as that girl. She sure looks the queen to me.”
Cavanagh did not greatly relish this line of conversation, but the pause enabled him to say: “Miss Wetherford is not much Western; she got her training in the East. She’s been with an aunt ever since her father’s death.”
“So far as anybody knows, he is.”
“Well, he’s no loss. I knew him, too. He was all kinds of a fool; let a few slick ones seduce him with fizz-water and oysters on the half-shell—that’s the kind of a weak sister he was. He got on the wrong side of the rustler line-up—you know all about that, I reckon? Fierce old days, those. We didn’t know anything about forest rangers or game wardens in them days.”
The stranger’s tone was now that of a man quite certain of himself. He had become less furtive under the influence of the food and fire.