“You should tell that to your father, too.”
“Dad runs sheep on the range to protect himself. He doesn’t drive out other people’s cattle and take away their living.”
“Well, I might compromise, but not at the end of a gun.”
“No, of course not. Here comes dad now,” she added hurriedly, aware for the first time that she had been holding an extended conversation with her father’s foe. 114
“We started enemies and we quit enemies. Will you shake hands on that, Miss Lee?” he asked.
She held out her hand, then drew it swiftly back. “No, I can’t. I forgot. There’s another reason.”
“Another reason! You mean the Arkansas charge against me?” he asked quietly.
“No. I can’t tell you what it is.” She felt herself suffused in a crimson glow. How could she explain that she could not touch hands with him because she had robbed him of twenty thousand dollars?
Lee stopped at the steps, astonished to see his daughter and this man in talk together. Yesterday he would have resented it bitterly, but now the situation was changed. Something of so much greater magnitude had occurred that he was too perturbed to cherish his feud for the present. All night he had carried with him the dreadful secret he suspected. He could not look Melissy in the face, nor could he discuss the robbery with anybody. The one fact that overshadowed all others was that his little girl had gone out and held up a stage, that if she were discovered she would be liable to a term in the penitentiary. Laboriously his slow brain had worked it all out. A talk with Jim Budd had confirmed his conclusions. He knew that she had taken this risk in order to save him. He was bowed down with his unworthiness, with shame that he had dragged her into this horrible tangle. He was convinced that Jack Flatray would get at the truth, 115 and already he was resolved to come forward and claim the whole affair as his work.
“I’ve been apologizing to Mr. Morse for insulting him, dad,” the girl said immediately.