“You have a kind of belief in the homestead-boys, Hetty?” he said.
“Yes, but everybody knows who I belong to.”
“Of course! Well, I guess you are not going to have any kind of belief in them now. They’re planning to run our big stock train through the Bitter Creek bridge.”
Hetty turned white. “They would never do that. Their leaders would not let them.”
“No?” said Allonby. “I’m sorry to mention it, but it seems they have Larry’s order.”
A little flush crept into Flora Schuyler’s face, but Hetty’s grew still more colourless and her dark eyes glowed. Then she shook her shoulders, and said with a scornful quietness, “Larry would not have a hand in it to save his life. There is not a semblance of truth in that story, Chris.”
Allonby glanced up in astonishment, but he was youthful, and that Hetty could have more than a casual interest in her old companion appeared improbable to him.
“It is quite a long time since you and Larry were on good terms, and no doubt he has changed,” he said. “Any way, his friends are going to try giant powder on the bridge, and if we are fortunate Cheyne will get the whole of them, and Larry, too. Now, we’ll change the topic, since it does not seem to please you.”
He changed it several times, but his companions, though they sat and even smiled now and then, heard very few of his remarks.
“I’m going,” he said at last, reproachfully. “I am sorry if I have bored you, but it is really quite difficult to talk to people who are thinking about another thing. It seems to me you are both in love with somebody, and it very clearly isn’t me.”