It was no answer, yet it was as good as any she could give. How could she phrase a feeling that rested only on faith in such a way as to give it weight to others? “I’m one o’ these Missouri guys,” the foreman snorted. “He’ll have to show me. What’s he doin’ here? What was he hidin’ out in the bushes for? How could he tell soon as I jumped him that a man had been shot?” “He can explain that,” she urged; and to the vagrant, “Can’t you?” “I can,” he answered her. “We’re waiting,” snapped Reed, and voice and manner showed that he had prejudged the case. The young man met his look with one of cold hostility. “You can keep on waiting--till the sheriff comes.” “Suits me,” snapped the ranchman. “Hustle along, Lon. No use wasting time.” The foreman and his prisoner departed. Betty stayed with her father, miserably conscious that she had failed to avert the clash of inimical temperaments. None the less she was determined to keep the young man out of the hands of the law. She began at once to lay siege to her father. “I knew he didn’t do it. I knew he couldn’t. It was that one they call Cig. I know it was.” “All three of ’em in it likely.” “No. They had quarreled. He wouldn’t be in it with them. That Cig thought he had told you about his attacking me. He threatened this Tug. I think he’d have shot him just as he did you--if he’d got a chance.” “If he did shoot me. That’s not been proved.” “Well, if this one--the one they call Tug--if he did it, why didn’t he have a gun when Lon found him? Lon says he came on him unexpectedly. He had no time to get rid of it. Where is it?” “Maybe he dropped it while he was running.” “You know you don’t believe that, Dad,” she scoffed. “He’d have stopped to pick it up. Don’t you see he had to have that gun--the man that shot you did--to make sure of getting away? And when Lon found him he would have killed Lon, too. He’d have had to do it--to save himself from the hangman. The fact that this Tug didn’t have a gun proves that he didn’t shoot you.” “Say he didn’t, then. Does it prove he wasn’t in cahoots with the man who did? What was he hiding here on the ground for?” “You didn’t give him a chance to tell. He was ready to, if you’d let him.” “I asked him, didn’t I?” “Oh, Dad, you know how you asked him,” she reproached. “He’s got his pride, same as we have. If he wasn’t in this--and I know he wasn’t--you can’t blame him for getting stubborn when he’s badgered. His explanations would have tumbled out fast enough if he’d been guilty.” This struck Reed as psychologically true. The fellow had not acted like a guilty man. He had held his head high, with a scornful and almost indifferent pride. “What did I say, for him to get his back up so quick?” the ranchman grumbled. “It’s the way you said it, and the way Lon acted. He’s quick-tempered, and of course he’s fed up with our treatment of him. Wouldn’t you be?” “What right has he to travel with a bunch of crooks if he doesn’t expect to be classed as one?”