Deringham appeared a trifle embarrassed. "I'm not sure that you are indebted to me at all," he said. "I only seized his shoulder, and you would not have expected me to look on?"
Alton shook his head. "I don't think he would have missed if you hadn't done it, and I will not forget," he said. "This thing will always count for a good deal between you and me."
He went away, and Alice Deringham glanced at her father with a flush in her face. "I did not understand before. The man had a pistol and you took it from him?"
"No," said Deringham, with a curious little laugh. "I meant to knock his arm up, and am not sure that I did it. It was, considering all things, a somewhat disinterested action."
CHAPTER VIII
HALLAM'S CONFEDERATE
It was about the middle of the afternoon of the day following Alton's affray with the workman when the cook came limping into the verandah of the Somasco ranch, where Deringham leaned, cigar in hand, against a pillar talking to his daughter. She lay in a hide chair Alton had found for her, listening more to the drowsy roar of the river than to her father, but she lifted her head when the man appeared. He carried a tray whereon were displayed a badly dinted metal teapot of considerable size, two large, flat cakes of bread, a can of condensed milk, and a saucer swimming with partially melted butter, which had resolved itself into little lumps of whitish grease and a thin golden fluid under the afternoon sun. He laid them on the table, and after deftly picking out one or two dead flies from the butter turned to the girl with a grin in which pride was evident, though it was apparently meant to be deprecatory.
"I guess this is the kind of thing you were used to in the old country, Miss," he said. "You have only got to tell me if you would fancy a piece of cold pork or other fixings."
Alice Deringham dared not glance at her father, who seemed to be gazing fixedly down the valley, but her lips quivered a little as she turned towards the man.
"I do not think we shall want anything else," she said with a serenity that cost her an effort, though it was excellently assumed.