“Why, whenever you feel able,” Connie told him.
“I’m a lot better already,” the man declared heartily. “I’ll be ready to go to work in the morning.”
After Connie had gone, Jim Barrows wandered outdoors. He went out to the corrals and talked for a time with Lefty and Alkali. The foreman coldly ignored him, but the other cowboys tried to be friendly. It came to them by degrees that the stranger knew more about ranch work than they had thought.
“There’s something queer about that fellow,” Lefty confided to Connie later on.
“How do you mean?” she asked quickly.
“Seems to me like I’ve seen him before, only I can’t remember where,” the cowboy said, scratching his shaggy locks. “But I’m dead sure of one thing. Jim Barrows ain’t the greenhorn we took him to be.”
CHAPTER IV
The Foreman’s Boast
Try as she would, Connie could not rest that night. Her mind was a turmoil of worries which made anything but fitful sleep impossible. The girl stood long by her bedroom window, gazing out across the moonlit ranch which had been her childhood home; now her sole possession. She could not rid her mind of the fear that soon her beloved Rainbow would pass into the hands of another owner. At dawn she dressed and sauntered down to the stables.
When Connie was a little girl she liked nothing better than to get up early to see the sunrise; and this morning, as the eastern sky reddened against the distant mountains, the old scenes lived again.
Connie was startled from her reverie by the sound of masculine voices coming from the bunkhouse. The cowboys were starting the day with their usual round of banter. They talked so loudly that she could not help hearing every word that the men said.