“I didn’t drag him away, Vicky. You did that when you stopped the rescue at the mine and planned a way to get him out of town.” “Both you and Scot are too foolhardy,” she scolded. “You go along with your heads up and a scornful ‘Well-here-I-am, shoot-me-down-from-behind-if-you-want-to’ air that there’s no sense in. A man owes something to his friends and his relatives, doesn’t he? No need of always wearing a chip on your shoulder, is there?” “Does Scot carry a chip on his shoulder?” Hugh asked, smiling. “Oh, well, you know what I mean. He could try to dodge trouble a little—and so could you. But you’re both so stiff-necked.” “I reckon Scot figures that the safest way to duck danger is to walk right through it,” he said gently. “There are times when you can’t run away from it. I always run when I can. Different with Scot. _You_ blow him up good. He needs to take better care of himself, what with Mollie an’ the baby dependent on him.” “_Yes_, you run,” she scoffed. “Were you running from it when you plastered this town with handbills about Sam Dutch’s knife? I’ve heard all about it.” “A man’s got to throw a bluff sometimes, or get off the earth and eat dirt.” “And the time you ran him out of Aurora.” “Hmp! If I’d weakened then he’d ’a’ followed me an’ made me Number Twelve or Thirteen in his private graveyard.” “You make excuses, but there’s something in what Ralph Dodson says—that you act as though you had some kind of partnership with Providence that protected you.” “If you can point out a single time when either Scot or I went out lookin’ for trouble, Vicky, I’ll plead guilty to being too high-heeled. All we ask is to be let alone. When it’s put up to him and forced on him, a man can’t crawl out of danger. He’s got to go through.” She smiled. “You put me in the wrong, of course. I know you don’t either of you want trouble. You’ve used the right word yourself. You McClintocks are high-heeled. You walk as though you were king of Prussia.” “I’ve got him backed off the map. I’m an American citizen,” he answered, meeting her smile. But though Vicky scolded him, she knew that she would not want Hugh to carry himself a whit less debonairly. Her spirit went out in kinship to meet his courage. She gloried in it that he would not let himself be daunted by the enmity of men less scrupulous and clean of action, that he went to meet unsmilingly whatever fate might have in store for him. Surely it was only in her beloved West that men like the McClintocks were bred. CHAPTER XXXVIII THE BATTLE OF BALD KNOB