Penny watched the dancing flames for several minutes. There were so many things she wanted to discuss that she hardly knew where to begin. Bryant was a hard man, at best, to talk to. The wrong thing spoken, and he'd go into one of his tantrums or retire to a shell of stubborn silence that would tell her nothing. "Jeb said you were the one who shot at Mort," the girl began. Bryant nodded. "I sensed things boilin' up between him an' Rebecca fer a long time. I didn't figure he'd go as far as killin' his wife or I'd o' done somethin' before now. I heard the shot he fired an' hoped it'd gone wild--that's why I shot tuh wound him." "Then you didn't intend to kill him?" "Course not," snapped Bryant quickly. "Shot tuh wing him, just like I done. Yuh savvy that? I hit right where I aimed!" The old man leaned forward in his chair as he spoke, making a very definite point of what he said. Penelope nodded. "But now that Mort is going to recover, he'll of course be punished for murder, won't he?" Bryant's eyes stared hard at the girl. "Who told yuh," he barked, "tuh ask that?" Penny was surprised at his intensity. "Why--why," she stammered, "no one asked me to." "You sure of that?" "Of course." "Yuh sure it wasn't that cowhand called Yuma that put yuh up tuh findin' out what my intentions was regardin' Mort?" "I haven't talked with Yuma since he carried Mort here to the house." Bryant leaned back, eyes squinting toward the fire, lips pursed in thought. Penny tried to study her uncle's eyes. Was it true that they were failing? If so, how could he have fired with such amazing accuracy? She remembered what Jeb had said just after the shooting: "Men with eyes that ain't no good can't shoot a rifle." Bryant Cavendish was grumbling in an undertone. "Run this place all my life. Built 'er up from nothin' to one o' the best ranches in Texas. Now I can't turn without bein' told how tuh run my own affairs by every saddle tramp that drifts in here fer work." "Why did you mention Yuma?" asked Penny. "I had a row with that upstart this afternoon." "Oh--" Penny lifted her eyebrows questioningly "--you did?" "As if I didn't know what's goin' on, on my own property. Why, that pipsqueak from Arizona tried tuh tell me that I was hirin' outlaws! I told him tuh mind his own damn business an' when I wanted advice from him I'd ask him fer it." Penny calculated that the argument must have been previous to her talk with Yuma, because Bryant and the blond cowhand had had no chance to talk after the shooting, which came almost immediately following her discussion at the corral. This, then, could not have been the cause of the strange change in Yuma's manner. Yuma had been almost antagonistic when she had met him beside Mort's fallen body. "But, Uncle Bryant," said Penny seriously, "are you sure you haven't any outlaws working here? You might not know them, you see, and Yuma having been outside the Basin until just recently...."