Betty went into the house dissatisfied with herself. She had not meant to make more trouble, but to enlist her father’s sympathy in the cause of the young fellow who had saved her from the other tramp. As for the one who had attacked her, she did not care whether he was punished or not. She had much rather no hue and cry over the country was made about it. Though she did not say so, she hoped the vagrants would get away uncaught.
She busied herself with household duties. Under her direction and with her help, Bridget the cook was putting up half a dozen boxes of peaches. The two women worked into the middle of the hot afternoon before they had finished.
“An’ that’s that,” Bridget said with a sigh of relief as she sealed the last jar. “Fegs, I don’t mind a hotter day this summer. It’s a b’iler.”
She was an old family servant and was in part responsible for the bringing up of Betty. More than one rancher in the neighborhood had attempted the adventure of wooing Bridget Maloney, but none of them had been able to lure her from the Diamond Bar K to become the mistress of a home of her own.
“You’d better lie down and sleep an hour, dear,” the girl advised.
“An’ phwat would I be doin’ that for wid all these kettles an’ pots to be cleaned up? Scat! Get ye out o’ my kitchen now, mavourneen, an’ I’ll redd up in a jiff.”
Betty found a magazine and walked out to the shade of a pine grove where a hammock hung. She settled herself comfortably and began to read. It was delightfully cool among the pines after the hot kitchen. She grew drowsy. Her eyes closed.
The sound of far-away voices was in her ears when she wakened. As her thoughts cleared, so did the voices. She heard Dusty’s, strident, triumphant.
“It’s up to the old man now.”
The girl turned in the hammock and saw the squat cowpuncher go jingling into the house. Burt lounged on a horse, his right leg thrown round the horn of the saddle. Some one else, partly hidden from her by the ponies, was sitting on the porch.