"Sorry, Miss Wadley. I hadn't ought to have brought the herd through town. We was drivin' to water."
"Are you hurt?" Ramona heard her dry, faint voice ask.
"Me!" he said in surprise. "Why, no, ma'am."
He was a tall, lean youth, sunburned and tough, with a face that looked sardonic. Ramona recognized him now as her father's new foreman, the man she had been introduced to a few days before. Hard on that memory came another. It was this same Jack Roberts who had taken her brother by surprise and beaten him so cruelly only yesterday.
"It threw you around so," she murmured.
"Sho! I reckon I can curry a li'l ol' longhorn when I have it to do, ma'am," he answered, a bit embarrassed.
"Are—are you hurt?" another voice quavered.
With a pang of pain Ramona remembered Arthur Ridley. Where had he been when she so desperately needed help?
"No. Mr. Roberts saved me." She did not look at Ridley. A queer feeling of shame for him made her keep her eyes averted.
"I—went to get help for you," the boy explained feebly.