The weeks slipped away and brought with them healing to the wounded man at Seven Mile. He moved from the bed where at first he had spent his days to a lounge in the living room, and there, from the bay window, he could look out at the varied life of the cattle country. Men came and went in the dust of the drag drive, their approach heralded by the bawl of thirsty cattle. Others cantered up and bought tobacco and canned goods. The stage arrived twice a week with its sack of mail, and always when it did Public Opinion gathered upon the porch of the store, as of yore. Phil Sanderson he saw often, Yeager sometimes, and once or twice he caught a glimpse of Healy's saturnine face.
A scarcity of beef and a sharp rise in prices brought the round-up earlier than usual. Every spare man was called upon to help comb the hills for the wild steers that ran the wooded water-sheds, as untamed as the deer and the lynx. Even the storekeeper, Benwell, was pressed into the service. 'Rastus and the nester were the only men about the place, the deputy sheriff having been recalled to Noches on the collapse of Healy's story.
The removal to a distance of the rest of her admirers did not have the effect of throwing Keller alone with Phyllis more often. The young mistress of the ranch invited Bess Purdy to visit her, and now he never saw her except in the presence of her other guest.
Bess took him in at once, evidencing her approval of him by entering upon a spirited war of repartee with him. She had not been in the house twenty-four hours before she had unbosomed herself of a derisive confidence.
"I don't believe you're a bank robber, at all! I don't believe you are even a rustler! You're a false alarm!"
Both Keller and Miss Sanderson smiled at the daring of the girl's challenge. But the former defended himself with apparent heat.
"What makes you think so? Why should you undermine my reputation with such an assertion? You can't talk that way about me without proving it, Miss Purdy."
"Well, I don't. You don't look it."
"I can't help that. You ask Mr. Healy. He'll tell you I am."
"You'll need a better witness than Brill before I'll believe it."
"And I thought you were going to like me," he lamented.
"I like a lot of people who aren't ruffians, but of course I can't admire you so much as if you were a really truly bad man."
"But if I promise to be one?"