Her little hand beat upon the rock in her distress. “I never would have believed it. Nobody could have made me believe it. I—I—why, I trusted you like my own father,” she lamented. “To think that you would take that way to stock your ranch—and with the cattle of my father, too.”
His face was hard as chiseled granite. “Distrust all your friends. That’s the best way.”
“You haven’t even denied it—not that it would do any good,” she said miserably.
There was a sound of hard, grim laughter in his 46 throat. “No, and I ain’t going to deny it. Are you ready to go yet?”
His repulse of her little tentative advance was like a blow on the face to her.
She made a movement to rise. While she was still on her knees he stooped, put his arms around her, and took her into them. Before she could utter her protest he had started down the trail toward the house.
“How dare you? Let me go,” she ordered.
“You’re not able to walk, and you’ll go the way I say,” he told her shortly in a flinty voice.
Her anger was none the less because she realized her helplessness to get what she wanted. Her teeth set fast to keep back useless words. Into his stony eyes her angry ones burned. The quick, irregular rise and fall of her bosom against his heart told him how she was struggling with her passion.
Once he spoke. “Tell me where it was you saw this rustler—the exact place near as you can locate it.”