“All right. I’ll send one of the boys right away.”
“How did y’u leave ’Frisco, ma’am?” asked Mac, by way of including himself easily.
“He’s resting quietly. Unless blood-poisoning sets in they ought all to do well.”
“It’s right lucky for them y’u happened along. This is the hawss corral, ma’am,” explained the young man just as Morgan opened his thin lips to tell her.
Judd contrived to get rid of him promptly. “Slap on a saddle, Mac, and run up the remuda so Miss Messiter can see the hawsses for herself,” he ordered.
“Mebbe she’d rather ride down and look at the bunch,” suggested the capable McWilliams.
As it chanced, she did prefer to ride down the pasture and look over the place from on horseback. She was in love with her ranch already. Its spacious distances, the thousands of cattle and the horses, these picturesque retainers who served her even to the shedding of an enemy’s blood; they all struck an answering echo in her gallant young heart that nothing in Kalamazoo had been able to stir. She bubbled over with enthusiasm, the while Morgan covertly sneered and McWilliams warmed to the untamed youth in her.
“What about this man Bannister?” she flung out suddenly, after they had cantered back to the house when the remuda had been inspected.
Her abrupt question brought again the short, tense silence she had become used to expect.
“He runs sheep about twenty or thirty miles southwest of here,” explained McWilliams, in a carefully casual tone.