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Updated: June 14, 2025
"But I thought things about you that I shouldn't have thought. I felt that you ought to have punished Pickett. I am glad, now, that you didn't." She shuddered, and looked again at Randerson, just dismounting at the bunkhouse, paying no attention to them. "Then you wouldn't have me like him?" He indicated Randerson. "No," she said.
"I'll have to put Patches away, ma'am," he said, "I'd sure have to come down, anyway." That talk was held with Uncle Jepson looking on and listening and smoking his pipe. And when it was over, Randerson took the saddle and bridle off Patches, turned him loose in the corral and returned to the porch to talk and smoke with Uncle Jepson.
"I reckon you'll take up with Masten again," she said, trying to control her voice. Ruth looked intently at her, but she did not notice the girl's emotion through her interest in her words. "What do you mean by 'again'?" "I heard that you'd broke your engagement." "Who told you that?" Ruth's voice was sharp, for she thought Randerson perhaps had been talking.
He was beginning to realize that he could not beat Randerson with jabs and stinging counters that hurt without deadening the flesh where they struck; nor could he hope to wear the Westerner down and finally finish him. And with this realization came a pulse of fear. He began to take more risks, to set himself more firmly on his feet in order to give his blows greater force when they landed.
He swung his chair around and faced her, and forgetting his pipe in his excitement, he told her the story he had told Randerson: how he had gone into the messhouse on the day of the killing of Pickett, for a rest and a smoke, and how, while in there he had overheard Chavis and Pickett plotting against Randerson, planning Pickett's attack on her, mentioning Masten's connection with the scheme.
"Throwed twice, eh?" said Uncle Jepson to Randerson, when a few minutes later he followed the range boss out on the porch. He grinned at Randerson suspiciously. "Throwed twice, eh?" he repeated. "Masten's face looks like some one had danced a jig on it. Huh! I cal'late that if you was throwed twice, Masten's horse must have drug him!" "You ain't tellin' her!" suggested Randerson.
Several times she had observed meetings between him and Chavis and Pickett; invariably Chavis was sullen and disagreeable in his presence, and a number of times she had seen Pickett sneer when Randerson's back was turned. No one had told her of the open enmity that existed between Pickett and Randerson; the latter had not hinted of it.
For he's goin' away tonight, an' he ain't comin' back." Hagar covered her face with her hands and sank into the grass beside the path, crying. "By God, Randerson!" blustered Masten, "what do you mean? This is going too "
When they reached a level space in some timber that fringed the river, Masten attempted to urge his horse through it, but was brought to a halt by Randerson's voice: "We'll get off here, Masten." Masten turned, his face red with wrath. "Look here, Randerson," he bellowed; "this ridiculous nonsense has gone far enough. I know, now, that you were spying on us.
"We've been a-hopin' you'd come," answered Hagar. And with another smile at Ruth she stepped off the porch and mounted her pony. Randerson went directly to his room, and Ruth stood for a long time at the door, watching Hagar as she rode her pony over the plains.
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