“I want to go back East! To New York--Philadelphia--Boston--oh, all the places I’ve read about. Europe, too. I’m trying to get my father to sell the ranch and go traveling with me. All over the world. I’ve been trying to persuade him for two years. But I think he’ll do it now--maybe. His partner was killed, you know. He’s all broken up over that. He doesn’t say much, but it was an awful blow just the same. I think he’ll sell out.” “Got to be goin’,” grunted Ware’s Kid. All this talk of travel was over his head. Nor had it anything to do with his particular business--the capture of Eph Carson’s murderer. “I’ll ride with you. Will you get my horse? He’s tied to a cat-claw over yonder.” The Ranger got the pony and brought it back. He sat his stallion, holding her animal’s reins. She waited for an instant, but he was blind to her expectation that he would help her into the saddle. So she swung up unaided and jerked the reins from his hand. As they rode almost stirrup-to-stirrup toward the ranch-house, Ware’s Kid studied her covertly from beneath half-lowered sombrero brim. It dawned upon him suddenly that not yet had he seen her smile. The large, blue eyes were somber, always; she seemed to brood upon something. They rode in silence until, a half-mile or so ahead, the clutter of buildings which constituted the O-Bar holding showed against the desert shrubbery. “I hate it!” she burst out. “Oh, how I hate it!” Then they rode on silently again, the creak of saddle-leather, the scuffing of the animals’ hoofs, the only sound, until they dismounted in the ranch yard. There was but one horse in the cottonwood-log corral, a black gelding as large as the mount of Ware’s Kid. The girl glanced at it, then toward the house. “My father’s home,” she said tonelessly. “Come in.” They went around the house and, upon the rough veranda that shaded its front, found Simeon Rutter with feet cocked upon the rail, big, shaggy head upon his chest. He looked up at the sound of their footsteps and sun-narrowed black eyes softened amazingly as he saw his daughter. “Hello, Baby!” he rumbled. “Wonderin’ where yuh was.” Then, to Ware’s Kid, “Howdy, Kid. What’re yuh doin’ down here ag’in? Thought they sent yuh up to Austin, or some’r’s.” “Did. But sent me back. I got Dell Spreen.” “Yuh did! That’s shore good hearin’, Kid!” He came swiftly to his feet, with great hands hard-clenched. The girl had gone indoors and bitterly, yet with a certain grim repression, Simeon Rutter cursed Dell Spreen. “Where’s Spreen, now?” he demanded, breaking off suddenly. “Carwell? El Paso?” “Austin. Lookin’ up more evidence.” Simeon Rutter cursed the law’s dawdling ways; its coddling of an assassin. Ware’s Kid but half-listened. He was thinking of the efficient rifleman of the morning, who had bushwhacked him from the sand dunes. “How many big men in this country?” he asked abruptly. “_Big_ men?”