Lemuel was silent a moment. He glanced down at the buckles on his boots.
“By gosh, honey! I reckon you’ve got the ol’ man holed up,” he admitted rather ruefully. “But can’t you see, if it’d bin any one else, ’cept Bob Warburton, we’d have a tough time provin’ we wasn’t in cahoots with this thievin’ kiyote. It’s mighty ticklish business, I’m tellin’ you. He was bad hit, eh?”
She gave him a detailed account of the fugitive’s arrival at the ranch, but very carefully omitted to mention that she had taken him into the house. Adroitly, also, she evaded saying that he had departed. She dwelt in particular on the seriousness of his condition because of his loss of blood and his need of immediate care. Lemuel said no more following this explanation, though it was quite plain to her that some thought still troubled him.
While he attended to his chores Dot went into the kitchen and started getting supper ready. Now she was afire with excitement. Billy Gee, that terrible personage of whom she had heard such wild, thrilling things, was locked in her room—lying on her bed! Her prisoner! Her romantic brain reeled with ecstasy at the realization. And Sheriff Warburton, posses galore, were frantically beating brush the length and breadth of Soapweed Plains for Billy Gee, in pursuit of a ten-thousand-dollar reward. She had outwitted them—she, Dot Huntington!
The whole situation struck her as ridiculously funny. She leaned against the kitchen table and choked with silent laughter. This indeed was the big, exciting adventure she had longed for all these past years—infinitely big and exciting, pregnant with thrilling possibilities.
Then she remembered her father saying that Billy Gee had stolen twenty thousand dollars just the night before. She grew anxiously grave. From reflecting on the robbery she presently interpreted the cause of her patient’s singular concern over the safety of his saddlebags. They contained his stealings—currency, most likely; twenty thousand dollars in bills would make a bulky package, she believed.
Lemuel sauntered in from the barn some minutes afterward. He prepared to wash.
“I don’t see his horse, Dot,” he began abruptly, as he poured a dipperful of water into the basin.
“I turned it out with the rest—after I fed it. The poor thing was——”
“You give him Baldy, I s’pose?”