"You were here looking for me?"
"Yes. Just got back from Noches. Dad is still there. He don't know."
"But—what are they going to do with you?"
"What would you suggest, Miss Phyllis?" a voice behind her gibed.
The speaker was Weaver. He filled the doorway of the dining room triumphantly. She had had no fears for herself; he would see if she had none for her brother.
The boy whirled on the ranchman like a tiger whelp. "I don't care what you do. Go ahead and do your worst."
Weaver looked him over negligently, much as he might watch a struggling calf. To him the boy was not an enemy—merely a tool which he could use for his own ends. Phyllis, watching anxiously the hard, expressionless face, felt that it was cruel as fate. She knew that somehow she would be made to suffer through her love for her brother.
"You daren't touch him. He's done nothing," she cried.
"He shot at one of my riders. I can't have dangerous characters around. I'm a peaceable man, me," grinned Buck.
"You didn't, Phil," his sister reproached.