The foreman’s hard gaze took in the man, his white face and soft hands. “What would he do if he found it?” he asked bluntly.
“You’ve no right to say that,” she flung back. “I think it’s hateful the way you’re all acting. I tell you he fought for me—after what Father did to him.”
“Fought for you?” This was news to Lon. His assumption had been that the young fellow had merely entered a formal protest in order to clear himself in case retribution followed. “You mean with his fists?”
“Yes—against the thin-faced one. He thrashed him and put me on my horse and started me home. Then Dusty ropes him and drags him here on the ground and you come and insult him. He must think we’re a grateful lot.”
As they looked at the slim, vital girl confronting him with such passionate and feminine ferocity, the eyes of the foreman softened. All her life she had been a part of his. He had held her on his knee, a crowing baby, while her dimpled fingers clung to his rough coat or explored his unshaven face. He had fished her out of an irrigation ditch when she was three. He had driven her to school when for the first time she started on that great adventure. It had been under his direction that she had learned to ride, to fish, to shoot. He loved her as though she had been flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood. It was a delight to him to be bullied by her and to serve her whims.
“I renig,” he said. “Clint never told me the boy done that. I had it doped out he was just savin’ his own hide. But I’ll take it all back if it’s like you say. Shake, son.”
The tramp did not refuse to grip the big brown hand thrust at him. Nor did he accept the proffered alliance. By a fraction of a second he forestalled the foreman by stooping to knot a broken lace in one of the gaping shoes.
Cig, who had been edging closer, gave Tug a rancorous look. “I ain’t forgettin’ this,” he promised. “I’ll get youse good some day for rappin’ on me.”
“He didn’t tell on you. Some of my men brought him here in the gather like we did you,” Forbes explained.
“Wot’ell youse givin’ me? He rapped. That’s wot he done, the big stiff. An’ I’ll soitainly get him right for it.”