“Sure. But whoever it was——”
“We don’t know who it was,” McCoy lied. “We’re not going to try to find out. Forget that, Larry.”
They stabled their horses and stole into the bunk house. Fortunately it was empty, Rowan’s men being at the round-up. McCoy left them there and returned to the house.
He met Mrs. Stovall in the corridor. She was on her way to the kitchen to begin the day’s work.
“I’ve been out looking at one of the horses,” McCoy explained. “Colic, looks like.”
The housekeeper made no comment. It passed through her mind that it was odd he should take his rifle out with him to look at a sick horse.
CHAPTER XIV
THE DAY AFTER
ROWAN closed the door of his bedroom with a sick heart. It was characteristic of him that he did not debate his responsibility for the death of the two sheepmen. It did not matter that he had repeatedly warned his friends not to shoot nor that from the beginning to the end of the affair he had not fired his rifle. He could not escape the conviction of guilt by pleading to himself that but for the heady folly of one man the raid would have worked out as planned. Nor did it avail to clear him that he had tried to save the life of Gilroy and had protected the herders from the blood lust of Falkner. Before the law he was a murderer. He had led a band of raiders to an attack in which two men had died.