The foreman chuckled.
"One of 'em almost got me, boys, but a miss is as good as four or five days' ride, ain't it? Was circlin' for the horses, shootin' sideways at 'em when one of 'em put some lead in betwixt me and the horn, only quite close to the horn, it seems."
"Well, I'll be darned if you didn't have a close shave, and—"
Just then Jane Hunter rode up on her sorrel and when she saw her foreman she smiled in relief.
"You're back, and safely!" she said as she dismounted.
"With the bacon, ma'am."
"An' they almost got his bacon, Miss Hunter," Oliver said. "Look here!" He indicated the damaged saddle and explained.
"They came that close to shooting you?" she asked Dad. Her voice was even enough but she could not conceal her dismay at his narrow escape.
"Why, Miss Hunter, that ain't nothin'! I was just tellin' the boys that a miss is as good as a long ride. I'm your foreman, they was your horses—"
"Such things have to be," she broke in, making an effort to be decisive and convincing, but her voice was not just steady and Beck, at least, knew how desperately she tried to play up to her part, to smother her impulse to show that she held life dearer than she did her property, to shrink from the hard facts of the hard life she faced.