"Get goin'," grinned the halfbreed.
The Sergeant bent over his girth with flushed face.
"I have no idea what's in store for you, Pete. The Inspector has a lot of faith in you."
Blue Pete studied him quizzically. "More'n you have?"
"I don't know. Oh, I don't understand."
A shadow of pain came into the halfbreed's face. "I wudn't try then," he said shortly. And Mahon remembered that the Inspector had advised the same.
When they had been riding a long time the half-breed spoke wistfully. "I wasn't rustlin', Boy. All I did was to take from Duchy and Bilsy some o' the horses they rustled. If I hadn't, yuh wudn't 'a' seed 'em ever again. I've got 'em all back—all I took from them. . . . An' I ain't chargin' nothin' fer it neither."
Mahon thought it all out laboriously.
"But you stole them again from Torrance."
"Sure! Torrance knowed they was stole. He wudn't 'a got any other kind fer ten bucks. Yuh don't call that rustlin'?"