“Well, what do you think of it?” said he, at the same time backing up against a tree, so that he could not be seen by the men about the ranch. “You’ve got your cousin’s fortune, and I have had my revenge.”
“I wish you hadn’t done it,” was all Arthur could say, in reply.
“That’s a pretty way for you to talk, now, when it is too late—isn’t it?” said Sam, in disgust. “Yesterday, you were eager for it. I saw it very plainly, and that was the reason I proposed it.”
“But I didn’t suppose you would do it.”
“That was because you didn’t know me. I never fool about such things. You were in dead earnest, and I knew it, and acted accordingly.”
“Do you suppose that the men suspect anything?”
“If they did, they would make short work of us,” assured the herdsman with a grim smile. “We wouldn’t be here to see another sunrise, I bet you.”
Arthur winced at this, and he was greatly alarmed, too.
Sam’s use of the personal pronoun seemed to indicate that he was not willing to shoulder all the responsibility himself. According to his way of thinking, Arthur was as deep in the mud as he was, and Sam did not mean to let him forget it, either.
“Everything is in our favor,” continued the herdsman. “I have heard Bob’s father tell him more than once that he didn’t look for anything but to see him lost in the canyon some day, and there are others who have heard him say the same thing. So, why should they suspect that we had anything to do with it?”