"It isn't that," explained the girl. "If I buy him I shall try to arrange with you to leave him right here where I can get him at a moment's notice. I shall probably never need him but once, but when I do, I shall need him badly." She paused, but without comment the man waited for her to proceed: "I believe I am being followed, and if I am, when I locate the claim, I am going to have to race for the register's office."
Thompson leaned forward upon the table and chewed his toothpick rapidly: "By Gosh, an' you want to have a fresh horse here for a change!" he exclaimed, his eyes beaming approval.
"Exactly. Have you got the horse?"
The man nodded: "You bet I've got the horse! I've got a horse out there in the corral that'll run rings around anythin' in this country unless it's that there buckskin of Vil Holland's—an' I guess you ain't goin' to have no call to race him."
Patty was on the point of exclaiming that the buckskin was the very horse she would have to race, but instead she smiled: "But, if your horse started fresh from here, and even Vil Holland's horse had run clear from the mountains, this one could beat him to town, couldn't he?"
"Could do it on three legs," laughed the man.
"How much do you ask for him?" The girl waited breathless, thinking of her diminishing bank account.
Thompson's brow wrinkled: "I hold Lightnin' pretty high," he said, after a pause. "You see, some of us ranchers is holdin' a fast horse handy, a-waitin' fer word from the hills—an' when it comes, they's goin' to be the biggest horse-thief round-up the hill country ever seen. An' unless I miss my guess they'll be some that's carried their nose pretty high that's goin' to snap down on the end of a tight one."
"Now, Thompson, what's the use of talkin' like that? Them things is bad enough to have to do, let alone set around an' talk about 'em. Anyone'd think you took pleasure in hangin' folks."
"I would—some folks."