With a quick, sharp swing of her arm, she whipped her quirt through the air and it wrapped about Jane's soft throat with a vicious snap.
She stepped back with a choking cry, hiding her face. She heard Beck's short, "That'll do!" in a strange, unnatural voice, as though his throat were dry. She heard the Catamount's contemptuous sniff and her hard, "Clear out!"
She found herself in her saddle again, riding beside Beck as they moved toward the other HC riders, who, dismounted and seated on the ground, had not witnessed the dramatic parley and its humiliating climax. She was confronted by a situation which clearly spelled disaster for her ranch unless solved and solved quickly but that did not matter now.
She had been whipped, as the man who had insulted Bobby Cole had been whipped. Had been drawn into a brawl! And, far worse, she had found that the man toward whom she had toiled from the Jane Hunter that had been to the Jane Hunter she had one day dreamed she might be, had doubted her!
He was talking haltingly, something about bringing more men to shove the cattle up into the Coyote Creek country, but even through her confusion she realized that his thoughts were not finding words, that he was forcing himself to talk of those things. Her heart wanted to cry out, to tell him that he had misunderstood, that her encounter with Hilton was not occasioned by the motive Bobby Cole had suspected. The old Jane Hunter would have done so, but with her new strength had come another thing, until that hour hidden: it was pride, a pride which was as noble as her love, which would permit no cavail, which would not stoop to conquer!
She fought it down, striving for clarified thought, feeling for the word, the brief sentence which would explain away Beck's suspicion and leave that pride uninjured, for there must be such a way. And while she fought, blinded by tears and confused by humiliation, the moment of opportunity passed. Beck left her.
They were with the others, who grouped about her foreman, and he said:
"I was going to send one of you men to bring a dozen of the boys from the wagon to help save this stuff, if we can, but I've changed my mind,"—with a bitter significance which they did not catch. "I'm goin' myself. Curtis, you're in charge. Keep your head. Keep the cattle from breakin' his fence because they'll shoot 'em down an' if they start shooting cattle there'll be a lot of us get shot."
He started away at a gallop without so much as a look at Jane. Impulsively she called his name and spurred her sorrel after him. He set his horse on his haunches, wheeled and waited for her, face white, those eyes so dark, so accusing. That look checked the words that were on her lips as effectively as a blow on the mouth and he spoke first as she halted beside him:
"You did send for him, I take it? You didn't deny that."