“Who done it?” he demanded. “You a-shooting at some shadow? Look what you done! We get this run, just when they was gentling. I thought you was a cow hand!”
The girl was on the point of saying that, yes, she had shot; that she was sorry. She put a hand to her temple. . . . He had kissed her there.
“Who did, then? That fool nigger woman? You—Milly?”
“Me? I never didn’t. My gun only shoots oncet. Two shoots come, right at Miss Taisie’s tent. So help me on my Bible, Mr. Jim, I never did shoot not none. No, sah!”
“Who was it, Taisie?” He used her as a child now, but his voice was sad. “The shots was right at this place. Who was it—one of our men?”
“Who was he? Tell me now! You’re hiding him? You know who he was?”
A very long silence. The man’s face was fronting her, streaked with the dust. He was a loyal man.
“McMasters! You know why he came? Ah, Taisie, girl!”
“I don’t know! I think it was the trunk. He said something about it—I don’t know.”
“It’s the scrip, Taisie! He’s following that still? What did he say? Ask where it was?”
“Yes. But he said to look out for it, to watch it. I don’t understand——”
“I understand that that renegade McMasters is a thief and a scoundrel. We never orto of let him go!”
She could not make reply. The world was getting too much for her, overcoming.
An exclamation broke from Nabours when he saw Sanchez fling an arm, heard his faint call. He got on a horse, galloped over to where Sanchez stood, dismounted. Then he also saw the dead man.
“I know-a-dis-a _hombre_, Señor Jeem!” Sanchez was excited. “We send-a heem to jail. I tie-a da foot. How come-a heem here while he’s in jail? _Nombre de Dios!_”
Nabours saw the two wounds, an inch apart.
“_Quien sabe_, Señor?” replied Sanchez gravely. “I just find-a heem now.”
But the tired brain of Jim Nabours, up all night and strained to his limit over the scattered herd, only grew more muddled.
“Let him lay!” he ordered savagely. “That’s one more, anyhow, no odds who got him. Buzzards is too good for him!”
“Miss Taisie,” he began again as he found her at the cook fire, “that’s one of the Rudabaugh gang, all right. If it was Dan McMasters killed him he done it by mistake; he thought it was one of our men. Afore he went, he folds this corp’s hands and covers up his face with his hat. What more could he do?”