Grant shook his head. “Doesn’t it strike you that it would be very rough on Chris?”
Hetty would not look at him, and her voice was very low. “If anyone must be hurt, I would sooner it was Chris than you.”
He did not answer for a moment, and the girl, watching him in sidelong fashion, saw the grim restraint in his face, which grew almost grey in patches.
“It is no use, Hetty,” he said very quietly. “Chris would tell them nothing. There is no meanness in his father or him; but that wouldn’t stop him thinking. Now, you will know I was right to-morrow. Take him back his pistol.”
“Larry,” said the girl, with a little quiver in her voice, “you are right again—I don’t quite know why you were friends with me.”
Grant smiled at her. “I haven’t yet seen the man who was fit to brush the dust off your little shoes; but you don’t look at these things quite as we do. Now Chris will be getting impatient. You must go.”
Hetty turned away from him, and while the man felt his heart throbbing painfully and wondered whether his resolution would support him much longer, stood very still with one hand clenched. Then she moved back towards him swiftly, with a little smile.
“There is a window above the beams, where they pitch the grain-bags through,” she said. “Chris will go away in an hour or so, and the other man will only watch the door. There are horses in the corral behind the barn, and I’ve seen you ride the wickedest broncho without a saddle.”
She whisked away before the man, who felt a little, almost caressing, touch upon his arm; and heard something drop close beside him with a rattle, could answer, and in less than a minute later smiling at Chris Allonby gave him back his pistol.
“Do you know I was ’most afraid you were going to make trouble for me?” he said.