CHAPTER IV
BETTY RIDES
Betty Reed had watched unhappily the young tramp shuffle into the willows and disappear. She felt depressed by a complex she could not analyze. In part it was shame, for her father, for this tramp who looked as though he were made for better things, for the whole squalid episode; in part pity, not wholly divorced from admiration at the boy’s insolence and courage. He might be a wastrel, as her father had said. He might be a ne’er-do-well. But by some sure instinct she knew that there had been a time when he fronted with high hope to the future. That momentary meeting of the eyes had told her as much.
Something had killed him as surely as a bullet fired through the heart. The boy he had been was dead.
Lon Forbes chuckled. “They’ll keep going, I reckon, now they’ve found out this ain’t no Hotel de Gink. You certainly handed that youngest bum his hat, Clint. I’ll say you did.”
Now that it was over Reed was not very well satisfied with his conduct. The hobo had brought the punishment on himself. Still—there was something morally degrading about such an affray. One can’t touch pitch without paying the penalty.
“We’ll begin cutting this field to-morrow, Lon,” he said shortly. “Hustle the boys up so’s to finish the mesa to-day.” Across his shoulder he flung a question at the girl. “You going to town, Bess?”
“In an hour or so. Want me to do something?” she asked.
“Call at Farrell’s and see if he’s got in those bolts I ordered.”
The ranchman strode to the car followed by Forbes. The foreman was troubled by no doubts. His mind functioned elementally. If hoboes camped on the Diamond Bar K and made themselves a danger to the crops, they had to be hustled on their way. When they became insolent, it was necessary to treat them rough. That was all there was to it.
Betty swung to the saddle and rode back to the house. She was returning from an inspection of a bunch of two-year-olds that were her own private property. She was rather well off in her own right, as the ranch country counts wealth. The death of her uncle a year before had left her financially independent.