Stratton turned on him suddenly. "Who the devil do you mean?" he demanded sharply.
"Why, Tex, of course," shrugged Jessup. "He used to put in considerable time soft-soapin' around her. A hell of a nerve, I'll say, makin' up to such as her."
Buck scowled. "I never saw anything like that," he said brusquely, "except maybe once," he added. With a sudden recollection of that afternoon they moved the herd out of south pasture.
"Likely not," returned Bud. "He wasn't so bad till after yuh went. I got the notion he took to courtin' her, yuh might say, as a kind of last hope. If he could figger on gettin' her to marry him, he'd have the ranch an' everythin' on it without no more trouble at all. You'd think even a scoundrel like him would see she wouldn't look at him."
"Oh, no! Nothin' raw a-tall," returned Bud, divining the thought in Stratton's mind. "He just hung around the ranch-house a lot, an' was awful sweet, an' used them black eyes of his consid'able. Sorta preparing the way, I reckon. But he didn't get far." He chuckled reminiscently. "I'll tell the world, she didn't waste no time sendin' him about his business."
For a time Buck rode on in frowning silence. The very thought enraged him and added deeply to the score that was piling up so rapidly against the scoundrel.
Presently Bud's voice broke in upon his savage reverie.
"Funny we didn't see nothin' of the Mannings back there," he commented. "The lady couldn't of known yuh was around." He glanced slyly at Buck. "Besides," he added, seeing that his friend's expression did not lighten, "with somethin' like this doin', you'd think his lordship would want to strut around in them baggy pants an' yellow boots, an' air his views on how to go about to catch the gang."
Stratton turned his head abruptly. "But they must be there!" he said sharply. "They surely can't have gone away."
"There wasn't no talk of it when I left," shrugged Bud. "Still, an' all, me an' his nibs wasn't on exactly confidential terms, an' he might have forgot to tell me about his plans. Yuh got to remember, too, I've been gone over a week."
A worried wrinkle dodged into Buck's forehead. All along he had taken the presence of the Mannings so entirely for granted that the possibility of their having left the ranch never once occurred to him. But now, in a flash, he realized that by this time, for all he knew, they might be back in Chicago. As Bud said, it certainly seemed odd that neither of them had appeared when the posse rode up to the ranch-house. What a fool he had been not to make sure about it. Why hadn't he asked the question outright?