The tramp Overland, realizing that the deputy was badly injured, told the first person he met about the accident, advising him to get help at once for the deputy. Then he turned the pony toward the foothills. In a clump of greasewood he dismounted, and, leaving the reins hanging to the saddle-horn, struck Black Boyar on the flank. The horse leaped toward the Moonstone Trail. The tramp disappeared in the brush.
Louise Lacharme, more beautiful than roses, strolled across the vine-shadowed porch of the big ranch-house and sat on the porch rail opposite her uncle. His clear blue eyes twinkled approval as he gazed at her.
Walter Stone was fifty, but the fifty of the hard-riding optimist of the great outdoors. The smooth tan of his cheeks contrasted oddly with the silver of his close-cropped hair. He appeared as a young man prematurely gray.
"How is Boyar?" he asked, smiling a little as Louise, sitting sideways on the porch-rail, swung her foot back and forth quickly.
"Oh, Boy is all right. The tramp turned him loose in the valley. Boy came home."
"It was a clever bit of riding, to get the best of Tenlow on his own range. Was Dick very badly hurt?" queried Walter Stone.
"Yes, his collar-bone was broken and he was crushed and terribly bruised. His horse was killed. When I was down, day before yesterday, the doctor said Dick would be all right in time."
"How about this boy, the tramp boy they arrested?"
"Oh," said Louise, "that was a shame! He stayed and helped the doctor put Dick in the buggy and rode with him to town. Mr. Tenlow was unconscious, and the boy had to go to hold him. Then the boy explained it all at the store, and they arrested him anyway, as a suspicious character. I should have let him go. When Mr. Tenlow became conscious and they told him they had the boy, he said to keep him in the calaboose; that that was where he belonged."
"And you want me to see what I can do for this boy?"
"I didn't say so." And Louise tilted her chin.
"Now, sweetheart, don't quibble. It isn't like you."
The gray silk-clad ankle flashed back and forth. "Really, Uncle Walter, you could have done something for the boy without making me say that I wanted you to. You're always doing something nice--helping people that are in trouble. You don't usually have to be asked."