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Updated: June 19, 2025
Randerson caught Hagar's gaze and looked significantly from Ruth to the door. The girl accepted the hint, and coaxed Ruth to accompany her to the door and thence across the porch to the clearing. Randerson watched them until, still walking, they vanished among the trees. Then he took Chavis' body out.
His shaggy brows were contracted; somber, baleful flashes, that betrayed something of those passions that he was subduing, showed in his eyes as the pony skirted the timber where Randerson had tied Ruth's horse. When he reached the declivity where Ruth had overheard Chavis and Kester, he dismounted and led his pony down it, using the utmost care. He was conserving the pony's strength.
No morning in the East had ever made her feel quite like this. Out on the front porch later in the morning, with Chavis and Pickett standing near, she asked Masten to ride with her. He seemed annoyed, but spoke persuasively. "Put it off a day, won't you, Ruth? There's a good girl. I've promised to go to Lazette with the boys this morning, and I don't want to disappoint them."
We know that Chavis is in the country, but we didn't see him doin' the stealin'; we only think he done it." "If I should complain to the sheriff?" "You could do that, ma'am. But I reckon it's a waste of time." "How?" "Well, you see, ma'am, the sheriff in this county don't amount to a heap considered as a sheriff. He mostly draws his salary an' keeps out of trouble, much as he can.
That determination had not been acted upon until after dinner, however, and it was nearly two o'clock when she reached the ford where she had passed Randerson. The puncher had told her that Chavis' shack was about fifteen miles distant from the Flying W ranchhouse, and situated in a little basin near the river, which could be approached only by riding down a rock-strewn and dangerous declivity.
I ain't passin' around no more warnin's, an' you two is talkin' mighty sudden or the mourners will be yowlin'. What's the verdict?" Chavis sighed. "We wasn't meanin' no harm," he apologized, some color coming into his face again. "An' you?" Randerson's level look confused Kester. "I ain't travelin' that trail no more," he promised, his eyes shifting.
She saw them all, the cowboys at a respectable distance, Pickett and Randerson in front, with Masten and Chavis far behind, come to a halt. She divined she believed she had suspected all along what the march to the ranchhouse meant, but still she did not move, for she feared she could not stand. Ruth was roused, however, by Randerson's voice. It reached her, sharp, cold, commanding.
This scene seemed unreal to her the cowboys at a distance, Masten and Chavis in the rear, looking on, Pickett near the edge of the porch, his face bloated with impotent rage, his eyes glaring; the grim figure that Randerson made as he stood near Pickett, gun in hand, his eyes narrowed, alert. It seemed to her to be a dream from which she would presently awaken, trembling from the horror of it.
And now she realized that for all the knowledge that a look at Chavis' shack would give her, she might as well have stayed at the Flying W. She didn't know just what she had expected to see when she got here, but what she did see was merely the building, a small affair with a flat roof, the spreading valley itself, and several steers grazing in it. There were no other signs of life.
"It's bound to come," he commented. "Let's finish our game; it is your deal." On the mesa, Randerson urged Patches along the edge, over the trail that Ruth had taken when, months before, she had come upon Chavis and Kester at the declivity. "Nothin' would have happened, if it hadn't been for Masten," he told himself as he rode away.
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