“Go to it. We’ll see whether you make good.”
“Where is that paper you want me to sign?”
Luck dashed off his signature and pushed the document from him. He hated the necessity that forced him to surrender. For himself he would have died rather than give way, but he had to think of his daughter and of his boy Sam who was engaged in a plot to hold up a train.
His stony eyes met those of the man across the table. “No need for me to tell you what I think of this. A white man wouldn’t have done such a trick. It takes sheepherders and greasers to put across a thing so damnable as dragging a woman into a feud.”
Fendrick flushed angrily. “It’s not my fault; you’re a pigheaded obstinate chump. I used the only weapon left me.”
Kate, standing straight and tall behind her father’s chair, looked at their common foe with uncompromising scorn. “He is not to blame, Dad. He can’t help it because he doesn’t see how despicable a thing he has done.”
Again the blood rushed to the face of the sheepman. “I reckon that will hold me hitched for the present, Miss Cullison. In the meantime I’ll go file that homestead entry of mine. Nothing like living up to the opinion your friends have of you.”
He wheeled away abruptly, but as he went out of the door one word came to him.
“Friends!” Kate had repeated, and her voice told fully the contempt she felt.
At exactly two o’clock Dominguez set the Cullisons on the homeward road. He fairly dripped apologies for the trouble to which he and his friends had been compelled to put them.