“But I am afraid of what Philo Marsh will do,” returned Dorothy, in a similar tone. “He looks like a thunder-cloud.”
Mrs. White had swept from the office, and the two men finally came out. They did not notice the girls, and went off whispering together. A little later they rode away from the ranch sheds, but did not take the trail to Dugonne.
Ned and Nat had told the girls that some yearlings were to be branded that morning, down in the far corral, and Dorothy and Tavia wanted to see the work done—although they shrank from the idea of giving pain to the helpless cattle.
“But I suppose that is the only way to keep run of the stock,” Dorothy said, wisely.
“They couldn’t very well paste numbers on their horns,” rejoined Tavia, whimsically.
When they told Aunt Winnie they were going, they found her looking very grave, and she confessed to a headache. She suffered severely from that affliction at times and she said the glare of the sun outside oppressed her.
Dorothy knew that nervousness, enhanced by the argument with Philo Marsh, was the real cause of her aunt’s illness. She offered to remain at the house, but Aunt Winnie sent her out with Tavia.
“Go along and have a good time, child,” she said. “I shall be all right alone here.”
For at this time of day there was not a soul else about the big house. Mrs. Ledger and Flores were busy at their own quarters.
It was an hour later—after retiring in bad order because of the odor of burning hair and flesh in their nostrils, and the sound of piteous bawling in their ears—that the two girls approached the ranch-house. The branding operations had been too much for their courage.