The Pardners stood watching while she opened and closed the gate, cowboy fashion, without dismounting. With a wave of her hand she rode on up the cañon while the two old men followed her with their eyes until she passed from sight around a turn in the cañon wall.
Thad spoke slowly:
“You’re plumb right, Bob. The gal has mighty nigh growed into a woman, ain’t she? It don’t seem more’n a month or two neither, does it?”
“It sure don’t,” returned the other softly. “An’ ain’t she a wonder, Thad—ain’t she jest a nateral-born wonder?”
“She’s all of that,” agreed Thad, “an’ then some. It plumb scares me though, when I think of her findin’ out about herself an’ her all educated up by Saint Jimmy an’ his mother like she is. Holy Cats, Bob! What’ll we do?”
“She’s bound to know some day,” said Bob.
“She’s bound to, sure,” echoed Thad with a groan. “But my God a’mighty ain’t either of us got nerve to tell her now. If she hadn’t been goin’ to school to Saint Jimmy these last five years—I mean if she was like she would a-been with jest me an’ you to bring her up, it might not a-mattered. But now—now it’s goin’ to be plain hell for her when she finds out.”
Bob murmured softly:
“Won’t even let us work on Sundays ’cause it ain’t the right way for Christians like us to do. We’d ought to a-told long ago, that’s what we ought to a-done.”
“Sure, we ought to told her,” cried Thad, “jest like we’d ought to done a lot of things we ain’t. But mournin’ over what ought to been done ain’t payin’ us nothin’. What’re we goin’ to do, that’s what we got to figger out. The gal’s got to be told.”