Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/262

 sure he doesn’t lead her away on horseback from the ranch-house or get her alone in a room. She has few friends. I respect and honor her because she and I grew up as children together in the same little town in Wisconsin. I know her folks, all of them, and I’ve promised them—you know—to have a kind of care of her.”

“I think I know.”

He looked self-conscious even at her tone of understanding. “I need not try to deceive you; your instinct would be poor if it did not tell you more than I ought to. He came along and turned her head. You need fear nothing for yourself in going with her, and nothing for her if you can cover just those two points—can you remember? Not to let her go away with him on horseback, and not to leave her where she will be alone with him in the house?”

“I can and will. I think as much of Marion as you do. I am proud to be able to do something for you. How little I have known you! I thought you were everything I didn’t want to know.”

“It’s nothing,” he returned easily, “except that Sinclair has stirred up your cousin and the ranchers as well as the Williams Cache gang, and that makes talk about me. I have to do what I can to make this a peaceable country to live in. The 238