"Is that what you came to tell me, Dinsmore?" asked the owner of the A T O, his mouth set grim and hard.
There was an ugly look on the face of the outlaw, a cold glitter of anger in his deep-set eyes. "I hear you set the world an' all by that girl of yours there. Better send her in, Wadley. I'm loaded with straight talk."
The girl leaned forward in the chair. She looked at him with a flash of disdainful eyes in which was a touch of feminine ferocity. But she let her father answer the man.
"Go on," said the old Texan. "Onload what you've got to say, an' then pull yore freight."
"Suits me, Clint. I'm here to make a bargain with you. Call Ellison off. Make him let me an' my friends alone. If you don't, we're goin' to talk—about yore boy Ford." The man's upper lip lifted in a grin. He looked first at the father, then at the daughter.
There was a tightening of the soft, round throat, but she met his look without wincing. The pallor of her face lent accent to the contemptuous loathing of the slender girl.
"What are you goin' to say—that you murdered him, shot him down from behind?" demanded Wadley.
"That's a lie, Clint. You know who killed him—an' why he did it. Ford couldn't let the girls alone. I warned him as a friend, but he was hell-bent on havin' his own way."
The voice of the cattleman trembled. "Some day—I'm goin' to hunt you down like a wolf for what you did to my boy."
A lump jumped to Ramona's throat. She slipped her little hand into the big one of her father, and with it went all her sympathy and all her love.