"I heard--that is, the boys said something about a shooting affair up the road." She pointed toward the sheep-man's ranch. "I thought for a moment that perhaps you had been mixed up in that. I'm very glad to know that you were not, because you know it wasn't a very nice, manly thing to do to a defenseless stranger." Her cool eyes watched his nervous shifting. "You see I can't very well help hearing a lot of things around here. The girls hear things and they tell me, and then I am often forced to overhear the men and boys talking among themselves. It's none of my business, but yet I am glad to know that you were not one to set upon an innocent white man. I scarcely know this Mr. Livingston by sight, but he is a friend of Sydney's, my cousin, and they say,"--here she drew out her words slowly and impressively,--"that over in his country he has been in the army and is well versed in firearms; also that he has a small Gatling gun with him over here that shoots hundreds of shots a minute. So he really isn't so defenseless as he seems." This startled the man into open-mouth astonishment. "I thought there was something!--I mean I thought, when I heard tell about the fracas over there, that there was somethin' like that in the wind," stammered the man. Apparently Hope had told a deliberate untruth to force a confession from Long Bill, but yet it was a fact that she had heard something very similar. On the day before, Sunday, Jim McCullen had come to visit her. From his camp the noise of the shooting had been plainly heard, and through curiosity he and Carter had ridden to Livingston's ranch to inquire into it, but the sheep-man had been very reticent about the matter. Had told them only that there had been trouble with some breeds, and his herder had been killed. This old Jim repeated to Hope, adding that Livingston must have a Gatling gun concealed on his place, judging from the sound of the firing. So Hope in her effort to impress the tall cow-puncher had not used her imagination wholly. "I am glad you had nothing to do with it," she concluded, walking slowly away toward the kitchen end of the house. "And I hope your hand will soon be well." "That's right," said Long Bill. "I didn't have nothin' to do with it. No Gatlin' guns in mine, Miss!" CHAPTER X "We'll beat any cow-pony workin' on the round-up," declared the soft-voiced twin as he coiled up the stake-rope and tied it on to his saddle. It was four o'clock in the afternoon of the same day. School had been dismissed and the dozen children of various sizes were straggling homeward. Hope stood beside her horse patiently waiting for the twins to go, but they seemed in no particular hurry. She listened absent-mindedly to the boys' conversation.