“Fine specimen! ’F I had a son like him, I’d strangle the danged fool. Not a brain in his head. Guzzles whisky all day, tries to get smart with the girls, and give me to understand that his pa owns this whole shebang. Do yuh know, it would save money for the taxpayers, if he’d fall off his horse and break his fool neck? It would, for a fact.”
“How do yuh figure that?” asked Harry.
“Well it costs the county money to try somebody for murder, don’t it?”
“Then you think he’s due to go out on the hot end of a bullet, eh?” laughed Cultus.
“Wouldn’t surprise me a bit. Didja notice that Butch Van Deen is in charge here? Butch Van Deen knows as much about runnin’ this place as I do of runnin’ a church. He knows how to open the front door, and I know how to ring the bell.”
A few minutes later Cultus and Harry got their horses and headed for the ranch. Both Jane and her father greeted him warmly. Jane’s elbows were still in bandages, and he noticed that she was wearing a pair of old slippers, several sizes too large for her.
“I haven’t worn a boot since you were here last,” she laughed. “My toes are still raw.”
“You’ll have something to tell yo’re grandchildren about,” said Cultus. “They won’t believe it, but you can prove it by me.”
“That will be fine,” said Jane, blushing a little. “I only hope I can point you out to them.”
“Oh, I’ll still be wanderin’ around,” he laughed. Harry was as good as his word. He caught up a hammer-headed sorrel gelding, almost as tall as Cultus’s missing gray, and tied him to the corral.