Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/149

 vengeance of cowards and thieves, "wiser and better than the other way."

"What other way?" she asked, in sharp severity. "What do you mean?"

"I was thinking of the jokes of certain merry gentlemen," said he, grimly.

"You're even more of a green boy than I thought you were!" she declared.

"I am very green," he owned with a kindly toleration of her scornful abuse, "and I hope I'm still something of a boy. Maybe I'll outgrow both faults in time."

"You've seen how Aunt Hope has broken already under the worry and anxiety," she said, passing over him in her manner of noting only what it suited the baronial fashion of her argument to note. "I've heard them talking nearly all night time and again since you came. What do you suspect, Mr. Barrett? What da you want to know?"

"Maybe it was just a tin-horn's uneasiness for his little stake," said he.

"You knew before you came here, as all the stockholders know, why this business hasn't paid, but you don't know how the rustlers work, you folks back East; you can't realize how they can get away with so many cattle and not get caught or killed. I only wish you could run into a bunch of them, just to give you a taste of what it means!"

Evidently she had not heard of his fight with Wells and his companion his first day on the range, as she had not heard of many things which Nearing locked in