‘One of the squarest men anywhere, your father,’ he went on. ‘He knew you had something on Rat-tail that he didn’t. He knew that “breaking” a horse is old stuff. He said he had belonged to the old school that thinks a horse is ruined if it ever gets its own way. One of the things he liked to say best was that there are a whole lot of good riders, but only once in a long while a good horseman—’
‘But he didn’t understand about Palto.’
‘Oh, yes, Bart. Even Mort Cotton did.’
‘They didn’t think I did right, did they?’
‘Yes,’ said Elbert.
‘Foolin’, aren’t you, amigo mio?’
‘Not on your life! He and Mort Cotton were crazy-tired, all shot to pieces—that night in Red Ante. Of course, Letchie Welton only had his idea of law. Why, your father thought it out for years, never got over it—his part—or rather, what he didn’t do. Kept saying at the last that a man can’t “wash his hands.”’
‘Took it hard?’
‘Rather, but he understood it all at the last. Mort Cotton did, too. It was Mort who said at the hearing back in Bismo—that the most merciful shot he ever heard fired was yours that night before you rode out of Red Ante.’
‘I’m sorry Dad took it so hard.... You see—you see, I couldn’t get Palto loose. He might have lived for days—until they got him to a place where they could string him up—’