It was well on toward noon when she took the road for home. At Four-Mile Crossing it intersected the railroad track. A man with a pack on his back was plodding along the ties in the direction of Wild Horse. The instant her eyes fell on him, the girl recognized the tramp her father had beaten. The pallid face was covered with wheals and bruises. Both of the sullen eyes were ringed with purple and black.
They met face to face. Full into hers his dogged gaze challenged. Without a word they passed.
Betty crossed the grade and followed a descent to a small grove of pines close to the road. The sun was so hot that she decided to dismount and give the pony a breathing spell.
From the saddle she swung, then trailed the reins and loosened the cinch.
A sound brought her head round sharply. Two men had come over the brow of a little hill silently. One of them was almost at her elbow. A twisted, malevolent grin was on his lips. He was the hobo Lon Forbes had thrashed two or three hours ago.
“Welcome to our city, goil,” he jeered in choice Boweryese. “Honest to Gawd, you knock me dead. Surest thing you know. We’ll treat you fine, not like your dad an’ that other big stiff did us. We’ll not tell youse to move on, m’ dearie. Nothin’ like that.”
The girl’s heart felt as though drenched in ice-cold water. She had not brought with her the small revolver she sometimes carried for rattlesnakes. Both instinct and observation told her this man was vile and dangerous. She was in his power and he would make her pay for what her father had done.
She trod down the fear that surged up in her bosom. Not for nothing had she been all her life a daughter of the sun and the wind and wide outdoor spaces.
“I stopped to rest my pony from the heat of the sun,” she explained.
“You stopped to see old Cig,” he corrected. “An’ now you’re here it’ll be him an’ you for a while. The hop-nut don’t belong to de same push as us no longer. I shook him. An’ York don’t count. He’s no lady’s man, York ain’t.”