Miss Schuyler appeared thoughtful. “I fancy he did it because it was necessary. Didn’t it strike you that you were hurting him? That is a good man and an honest one, though, of course, he may be mistaken.”
“He must be,” said Hetty. “Now I used to think ever so much of Larry, and that is why I got angry with him. It isn’t nice to feel one has been fooled. How can he be good when he wants to take our land from us?”
Flora Schuyler laughed. “You are quite delightful, Hetty, now and then. You have read a little, and been taught history. Can’t you remember any?”
“Oh yes,” said Hetty, with a little thoughtful nod. “Still, the men who made the trouble in those old days were usually buried before anyone was quite sure whether they were right or not. Try to put yourself in my place. What would you do?”
There was a somewhat curious look in Miss Schuyler’s blue eyes. “I think if I had known a man like that one as long as you have done, I should believe in him—whatever he did.”
“Well,” said Hetty gravely, “if you had, just as long as you could remember, seen your father and his friends taking no pleasure, but working every day, and putting most of every dollar they made back into the ranch, you would find it quite difficult to believe that the man who meant to take it from them now they were getting old and wanted to rest and enjoy what they had worked for was doing good.”
Flora Schuyler nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I would. It’s quite an old trouble. There are two ways of looking at everything, and other folks have had to worry over them right back to the beginning.”
Then she suddenly tightened her grasp on the bridle, for the ringing of a rifle rose, sharp and portentous, from beyond the rise. The colour faded in her cheek, and Hetty leaned forward a trifle in her saddle, with lips slightly parted, as though in strained expectancy. No sound now reached them from beyond the low, white ridge that hemmed in their vision but a faint drumming of hoofs. Then Flora Schuyler answered the question in her companion’s eyes.
“I think it was only a warning,” she said.
She wheeled her horse and they rode on slowly, hearing nothing further, until the Range rose from behind the big birch bluff. Torrance had returned when they reached it, and Hetty found him in his office room.