Part 27 (2/2)

He looked after her, fingers caressing the welt that burned his cheek.

”You'll pay for that, Kate Cullison,” he said aloud to himself.

Anger stung him, but deeper than his rage was a growing admiration. How she had lashed out at him because he had taunted her of her father. By Jove, a girl like that would be worth taming! His cold eyes glittered as he put the bloodstained kerchief in his pocket. She was not through with him yet--not by a good deal.

CHAPTER V

”AIN'T SHE THE GAMEST LITTLE THOROUGHBRED?”

Kate galloped into the ranch plaza around which the buildings were set, slipped from her pony, and ran at once to the telephone. Bob was on a side porch mending a bridle.

”Have you heard anything from dad?” she cried through the open door.

”Nope,” he answered, hammering down a rivet.

Kate called up the hotel where Maloney was staying at Saguache, but could not get him. She tried the Del Mar, where her father and his friends always put up when in town. She asked in turn for Mackenzie, for Yesler, for Alec Flandrau.

While she waited for an answer, the girl moved nervously about the room.

She could not sit down or settle herself at anything. For some instinct told her that Fendrick's taunt was not a lie cut out of whole cloth.

The bell rang. Instantly she was at the telephone. Mackenzie was at the other end of the line.

”Oh, Uncle Mac.” She had called him uncle ever since she could remember.

”What is it they are saying about dad? Tell me it isn't true,” she begged.

”A pack of lees, la.s.sie.” His Scotch idiom and accent had succ.u.mbed to thirty years on the plains, but when he became excited it rose triumphant through the acquired speech of the Southwest.

”Then is he there--in Saguache, I mean.”

”No-o. He's not in town.”

”Where is he?”

”Hoots! He'll just have gone somewhere on business.”

He did not bluff well. Through the hearty a.s.surance she pierced to the note of trouble in his voice.

”You're hiding something from me, Uncle Mac. I won't have it. You tell me the truth--the whole truth.”

In three sentences he sketched it for her, and when he had finished he knew by the sound of her voice that she was greatly frightened.

”Something has happened to him. I'm coming to town.”

”If you feel you'd rather. Take the stage in to-morrow.”

”No. I'm coming to-night. I'll bring Bob. Save us two rooms at the hotel.”

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