“Well, he was a—a cowpuncher, I reckon.”
“Who was Jasper Stuart, then?”
An explanation could no longer be dodged or avoided. Houck had talked too much. Tolliver knew he must make a clean breast of it, and that his own daughter would sit in judgment on him. Yet he hung back. The years of furtive silence still held him.
“He was a fellow lived in Brown’s Park.”
“What had you to do with him? Why did Jake Houck tell me to ask you about him?”
“Oh, I reckon—”
“And about where you lived while I was with Aunt Molly at Rawlins?” she rushed on.
The poor fellow moistened his dry lips. “I—I’ll tell you the whole story, honey. Mebbe I’d ought to ’a’ told you long ago. But someways—” He stopped, trying for a fresh start. “You’ll despise yore old daddy. You sure will. Well, you got a right to. I been a mighty bad father to you, June. Tha’s a fact.”
She waited, dread-filled eyes on his.
“Prob’ly I’d better start at the beginnin’, don’t you reckon? I never did have any people to brag about. Father and mother died while I was a li’l’ grasshopper. I was kinda farmed around, as you might say. Then I come West an’ got to punchin’ cows. Seems like, I got into a bad crowd. They was wild, an’ they rustled more or less. In them days there was a good many sleepers an’ mavericks on the range. I expect we used a running-iron right smart when we wasn’t sure whose calf it was.”