“Maybe it’s not,” replied Jorth, chewing his mustache and eying Ellen with dark, intent gaze. “Y’u’ve met this Isbel twice.”
“It wasn’t any fault of mine,” retorted Ellen.
“I heah he’s sweet on y’u. How aboot that?”
Ellen smarted under the blaze of blood that swept to neck and cheek and temple. But it was only memory which fired this shame. What her father and his crowd might think were matters of supreme indifference. Yet she met his suspicious gaze with truthful blazing eyes.
“I heah talk from Bruce an’ Lorenzo,” went on her father. “An’ Daggs heah—”
“Daggs nothin’!” interrupted that worthy. “Don’t fetch me in. I said nothin’ an’ I think nothin’.”
“Yes, Jean Isbel was sweet on me, dad ... but he will never be again,” returned Ellen, in low tones. With that she pulled her saddle off Spades and, throwing it over her shoulder, she walked off to her cabin.
Hardly had she gotten indoors when her father entered.
“Ellen, I didn’t know that horse belonged to Isbel,” he began, in the swift, hoarse, persuasive voice so familiar to Ellen. “I swear I didn’t. I bought him—traded with Slater for him.... Honest to God, I never had any idea he was stolen! ... Why, when y’u said ‘that horse y’u stole,’ I felt as if y’u’d knifed me....”
Ellen sat at the table and listened while her father paced to and fro and, by his restless action and passionate speech, worked himself into a frenzy. He talked incessantly, as if her silence was condemnatory and as if eloquence alone could convince her of his honesty. It seemed that Ellen saw and heard with keener faculties than ever before. He had a terrible thirst for her respect. Not so much for her love, she divined, but that she would not see how he had fallen!