"We haven't heard yet what you are doing here, Buck Weaver," old Jim Sanderson said, holding the cattleman with a hard and hostile eye. "And after you've explained that, there are a few other things to make clear."
"Such as——" suggested the plainsman.
"Such as keeping my daughter a captive and insulting her while she was in your house," the father retorted promptly.
"I held her captive because it was my right. She admitted shooting me. Would you expect me to turn her loose, and thank her right politely for it? I want to tell you that some folks would be right grateful because I didn't send her to the penitentiary."
"You couldn't send her there. No jury in Arizona would convict—even if she were guilty," Tom Dixon broke out.
"That's a frozen fact about the Arizona jury," the cattleman agreed, with a swift, careless look at the boy. "Just the same, I had a license to hold her. About the insult—well, I've got nothing to say. Nothing except this, that I wouldn't be wearing these decorations"—he touched the scars on his face—"if I didn't agree with you that nobody but a sweep would have done it."
"Everybody unanimous on that point, I reckon," said Jim Yeager promptly.
Phyllis had been speaking to her father in a low voice. The old man listened with no great patience, but finally nodded a concession to her importunity.
"We'll waive the matter of the insult just now. How about that boy you shot up? Looks like you're a fool to come drilling in here, with him still lying there on his bed."
"He took his fighting chance. You ain't kicking because I played out the game the way you-all started to play it? If you are, I'll have to say I might have expected a sheep herder to look at it that way," Weaver retorted insolently.