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Updated: May 17, 2025
He broke off abruptly as the door swung open to admit Lynch and McCabe. The foreman, pausing just inside the room, eyed Stratton's preparations for departure with curling lips. As a matter of fact, what he had overheard of the interview between Buck and Mary Thorne had given him the impression that Stratton was an easy mark, whose courage and ability had been greatly overestimated.
The next night Miss Stratton's paper fell with an emphatic thwack in the middle of the front walk. The next night it did the same, and the next, and the next. "What has changed that boy?" wondered Miss Stratton with grateful relief, as weeks passed and the paper still fell in plain sight. She did not know that as Harry carefully aimed his papers, the boy thought, "'Ye have done it unto me."
The second of the two riders he had watched that afternoon had been mounted on just such a bay, and if there had been a lingering touch of doubt in Stratton's mind as to the identity of the two criminals, it remained no longer. More than once during the following few days, Stratton was forced to a grudging admiration, of Tex Lynch's cleverness.
In the meantime the situation, so far as Miss Manning, was concerned, grew daily more complicated. She showed a decided inclination for Stratton's society, and when he came to know her better he found her frank, breezy, and delightfully companionable.
"I've got to get to work right soon at something." Daggett took a swift step or two across the sagging porch, his face grown oddly serious. "Wal, I wouldn't try the Shoe-Bar, nohow. There's the Rockin'-R. They're short a man or two. Yuh go see Jim Tenny an' tell him " "What's the matter with the Shoe-Bar?" persisted Buck. Pop's glance avoided Stratton's.
The tools were found where Buck had left them, and the latter was on the point of remounting, when Mary Thorne came suddenly around the corner of the house. "Good morning," she greeted them both pleasantly, but with a slight undercurrent of preoccupation in her manner. "I was afraid you'd gone." Her eyes met Stratton's. "Could I speak to you a moment?" she asked. "Certainly, ma'am."
The high-crowned sombrero, abnormally broad of brim, the gaudy saddle-trappings and touches of bright color about the stranger's equipment, brought a slight frown to Stratton's face. Apart even from is recent unpleasant associations with them, he had never had any great fondness for Mexicans, whom he considered slick and slippery beyond the average.
So when they had finished eating, they walked down to the store to arrange for hiring one of Daggett's horses again. Here they were forced to spend half an hour listening to old Pop's garrulous comments and the repeated "I told you so," which greeted the news of Stratton's move before they could tear themselves away and turn in.
I should have had better control of my nerves and learned not to let myself get startled." She smiled reassuringly across the bowed head into Professor Stratton's concerned eyes. "I will see what I can do about holding back the manuscript till you reproduce the drawing," said the older woman, "it is barely possible that I can manage it."
Once, thinking he heard an unusual sound, the youngster turned his head alertly and stared westward through the shadows. But a moment later his eyes flashed back to that narrow, black oblong, and he resumed his uneasy pondering as to what Buck might possibly be finding out. Suddenly he gave a start as Stratton's voice, harsh, startled, came to him distinctly. "Mary! Mary! Why don't you answer?
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