“Talk?”
“Can he keep a still tongue in his head?”
“I don’t know as to that—but I do know he’s been a friend to me in my tribulation. He probably saved my life today—and he saved me a lot of trouble.”
“Saved your life?” queried Fair sharply, “How’s that?”
“I swung Cattle Kate Cathrew out of McKane’s store and she was going to shoot me but the sheriff faced her. I told her some things she didn’t like.”
Fair drew a long breath.
“What was the occasion?” he asked.
“My field of corn,” said Nance miserably, her trouble flooding back upon her, “last night it was rich with promise—what I was building on for my debt and my winter’s furnishing. This morning it was nothing but a dirty mass of pulp—trampled out by cattle—and we know that a Sky Line rider was behind those cattle. It’s some more of the same work that’s been going on with us since before our Pappy died. It’s old stuff—what the cattle kings have done to the homesteaders for many years in this country.
“If we weren’t our Pappy’s own—Bud and I—we’d have been run out long ago. I would, I think, when Bud got hurt, if it hadn’t been for him. He’s a fighter and won’t let go. The land is ours, right and fair, and he says no bunch of cut-throats is going to take it from us. I say so, too,” she finished doggedly.
Fair reached out a hand and for a moment laid it over hers, clasped on her folded arm.