"No," meditatively, "but without knowin’ any of the facts, and with no way t’ know ’em, you acted with sense, plain hoss sense. But that ’ere Weston, he sure done you dirt, all right."
Ross’s fists doubled involuntarily. Seeing this, Brown’s voice changed.
"Better fergit it, son. Chuck the hull matter. Ye’ve lost and they’ve won; and, if what I hear of the McKenzies is true, it won’t do ye no good t’ keep thinkin’ of this. And when ye git down t’ Camp I wouldn’t tell the first man I seen about this, nuther––"
"Because," Leslie broke in hotly, "they’d laugh at us for staying here so near Camp all winter."
Brown made no reply, but a slow grin expressed his opinion.
"I say, Less," Ross broke out, "we don’t look any bigger to ourselves than we did when we found out what that blast under the Ledge had done for us, do we?"
But Leslie did not hear. He sat with his elbows on his knees scowling down at the floor. "If we’re that near Camp," he reasoned, "it was surely one of the McKenzies that came up to see if we were here yet that night that I fired. He chose a night, you remember, when the snow was light and the crust icy. No tracks left for us to follow."
Their visitor asked for no explanation to this. He was studying Ross’s face intently as the boy sat leaning forward, his hands clasped around his knees.
"I say!" the older man broke out suddenly. "Ye look almighty like a feller that rode up in the stage from Meeteetse yisterday–almighty like ’im. They was two of ’em. They got out at Amos Steele’s."
"Where did they come from?" asked Ross absently.