“Look here,” said his protégée with boyish roughness, “that Dutchman sees everything crooked, especially if there’s an American in range, and he prejudices you. Why don’t you wake up long enough to notice that he’s framing some excuse to run off every decent chap who comes on the place? I knew Rhodes was too white to be let stay. I saw that as soon as he landed, and I told him so! What I can’t understand is that you won’t see it.”
“A manager has to have a free hand, Billie, or else be let go,” explained Singleton. “Conrad knows horses, he knows the market, and is at home with the Mexicans. Also he costs less than we used to pay, and that is an item in a bad year.”
“I’ll bet we lose enough cattle to his friends to make up the difference,” she persisted. “Rhodes was right when he called them a rotten bunch.”
“Let us hope that when you return from school you will have lost the major portion of your unsavory vocabulary,” he suggested. “That will be worth a herd of cattle.”
“It would be worth another herd to see you wake up and show you had one good fight in you!” she retorted. “Conrad has all of the ranch outfit locoed but me; that’s why he passes on this school notion to you. He wants me out of sight.”
“I should have been more decided, and insisted that you go last year. Heaven knows you need it badly enough,” sighed Singleton, ignoring her disparaging comment on his own shortcomings. And then as they rode under the swaying fronds of the palm drive leading to the ranch house he added, “Those words of your bronco busting friend concerning the life insurance risk sounded like a threat. I wonder what he meant by it?”
The telephone bell on the Granados Junction line was ringing when they entered the patio. Singleton glanced at the clock.
“A night letter probably,” he remarked. “Go get your coffee, child, it’s a late hour for breakfast.”
Billie obeyed, sulkily seating herself opposite Tia Luz––who was bolt upright behind the coffee urn, with a mien expressing dignified disapproval. She inhaled a deep breath for forceful speech, but Billie was ahead of her.
“So it was you! You were the spy, and sent him after me!”