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I'll stay right with him for a day or two if I can." "What for?" demanded Roubideau bluntly. "You're not in this thing. You've got no call to mix up in it. The boy saved Polly, an' I'll go this far. If I'm on the spot when he meets Champa or Roush an' I'll try to be there I won't let'em both come at him without takin' a hand. But he has got to choose his own way in life.
"I haven't been in love with her for years, but I didn't know it till about the Christmas holidays. She was a habit with me. There never was a sweeter girl than Polly Roubideau. I'll always think a heap of her. But well, she had more sense than I had knew all the time we weren't cut out for each other." He laughed a little, flushing with embarrassment.
The evening after his election as sheriff, Billie called at the home of Pauline Roubideau, who was keeping house for her brother. Jack Goodheart was leaving just as Prince stepped upon the porch. It had been two years now since Jack had ceased to gravitate in the direction of Lee Snaith. His eyes and his footsteps for many months had turned often toward Polly.
The others are afraid of you because you can put on that high-and-mighty, stand-offish air. Well, I'm not." "I see you're not." "She told me all about it. Since she was Polly Roubideau she had to help Jim escape. Can't you see that? She knew he was innocent, and it turned out she was right. Suppose she made a mistake and I don't admit it for a minute.
He lowered it inch by inch so that it would not creak, then spread over it the Navajo rug that had been there before the entrance of the girl. Pierre Roubideau was still on his first pipe when Polly came round the corner of the house and stopped at the porch steps. "I want to show you our new colt, Jack," she said to the deputy.
Old man Roubideau says we're welcome to stick around. The feed's good. Our cattle are some gaunted with the drive. It won't hurt a mite to let 'em stay right here a spell." But on the third day came news that induced the Missourian to change his mind.
Roubideau rounded up next day his beef stock and sold two hundred head to the drover. During the second day the riders were busy putting the road brand on the cattle just bought. "Don't bust yore suspenders on this job, boys," Webb told his men. "I'd just as lief lie up here for a few days while Uncle Sam is roundin' up his pets camped out there.
Already his eyes had narrowed and over them had come a kind of film. They searched every dark spot on the road. "Let's go to Tolleson's," he proposed abruptly. There was a moment of silence before Billie made a counter-proposition. "No, let's go back to the hotel." "All right. You fellows go to the hotel. Meet you there later." The eyes of Prince and Roubideau met. Not another word was spoken.
He did not know at what moment Roubideau would disgrace him by attempting another embrace. There was something in the Frenchman's eye that told of an emotion not yet expended fully. "Oh, shucks; you make a heap of fuss about nothin'," he grumbled. "Didn't I tell you it was Billie Prince sent me? An' say, I got a pill in my foot. Kindness of one of them dad-gummed Mescaleros.
Patiently the trailer followed them foot by foot to the point where they left the dry creek-bed and swung up the broken bank to a swale. "Probably Roubideau and his son Jean after strays," suggested Prince. "No. Notice this track here, how it's broken off at the edge. When I cut Indian sign yesterday, this was one of those I saw." "Then these are 'Paches too?" "Yes."
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