“Probably,” she said, in a queer voice.
“What was the first clue your father had had for many years about his little girl. He happened to be at Aravaipa the day you and I first met. I guess he took a fancy to me, for he asked me to take this case up for him and see if I couldn’t locate you. I ran Hardman down and made him tell me the whole story. But he lied about some of it, for he told me you were dead.”
“He is a born liar,” the girl commented. “Well, to get on with my story. Anderson, or Hardman, as he now calls himself, except when he uses his stage name of Cavallado, went into the show business and took me with him. When I was a little bit of a girl he used to use me for all sorts of things, such as a target for his knife throwing and to sell medicine to the audience. Lots of people would buy because I was such a morsel of a creature, and I suppose he found me a drawing card. We moved all over the country for years. I hated the life. But what could I do?”
“You poor little lamb,” murmured the man. “And when did you find out who you were?”
“I heard you talking to him the night you took him back to Epitaph, and then I began to piece things together. You remember you went over the whole story with him again just before we reached the town.”
“And you knew it was you I was talking about?”
“I didn’t know. But when you mentioned the locket and the map, I knew. Then it seemed to me that since this man Henderson had lost so many years of his life trying to save me I must do something for him. So I asked you to take me with you. I had been a boy so long I didn’t think you would know the difference, and you did not. If I hadn’t dressed as a girl that time you would not know yet.”
“Maybe, and maybe not,” he smiled. “Point is, I do know, and it makes a heap of difference to me.”
“Yes, I know,” she said hurriedly. “I’m more trouble now.”
“That ain’t it,” he was beginning, when a thought brought him up short. As the daughter of Webb Mackenzie this girl was no longer a penniless outcast, but the heiress of one-half interest in the big Rocking Chair Ranch, with its fifteen thousand head of cattle. As the first he had a perfect right to love her and to ask her to marry him, but as the latter—well, that was quite a different affair. He had not a cent to bless himself with outside of his little ranch and his salary, and, though he might not question his own motives under such circumstances, there would be plenty who would question them for him. He was an independent young man as one could find in a long day’s ride, and his pride rose up to padlock his lips.