“No. Sheriff Warburton appeared to get the notion from what I said that I traded horses, and I didn’t tell him different. I didn’t see why I should,” she explained frankly.
Lemuel, in the act of rolling up his sleeves, glanced around at her. He frowned.
“Are you meanin’ to tell me, Dot, that a dyin’ man with a sheriff at his heels’d resk a get-away on foot—pertickler, a hard case like this here Billy Gee? D’you think I’m a fool, Dot?”
“Well, count your stock if you don’t believe me, daddy. You’re—you’re doubting everything I say, to-day. I don’t know why. You’ve never done that before.”
She spoke in such a meek, sorrowful voice that it moved him to cross the room to her side and kiss her tenderly on the cheek.
“Lord bless you, hon!” he murmured in loving tones. “I ain’t aimin’ to doubt my leetle gal never. You know that.” He laughed. “The on’y thing I got to say is, it’ll be good-by, Billy Gee, ’fore the week’s up, if he don’t git somepn faster’n two laigs under him. He must ’a’ left his saddle an’ everythin’, eh?” he added craftily.
“Everything,” nodded Dot, in a very decisive manner.
Lemuel went back to the basin and silently proceeded with his washing, but he said to himself: “No bandit livin’ would do sech a crazy thing—shot up, into the bargain. You might fool Bob Warburton, daughter, but you can’t fool yore ol’ man. There’s ten thousand dollars hidin’ on this ranch this minute.”
After supper, Lemuel composed himself in his favorite chair and smoked his pipe and mused as usual. It was a quiet night—exceptionally quiet, thought Dot, who, mindful that only a thin board partition separated her room from the kitchen, grew more and more fearful as the evening dragged on, in the knowledge that an accidental sound or movement by her outlaw patient would lead her father to investigate. She trembled at the consequences to herself. By the hour she kept busy with the noisy task of scouring pots and pans, giving the cupboard a thorough overhauling, burnishing the stove, making all the distracting sounds possible, and wishing and wishing that Lemuel might go to bed. But he had no such inclination.
“At three dollars a day, a man’d work over twenty years for twenty thousand dollars, Dot,” he observed pointedly, breaking a long silence. “An’ this Billy Gee gits it overnight.”