When the stage stopped at noon for dinner the salesman made it a point to sit beside her at the long table. His persistent attentions to the girl made the delicate color of her cheek deepen. She was too shy, too unused to the world, to know how to suppress his audacities effectively. But it was plain to one young man sitting at the opposite end of the table that the familiarities of the man were unwelcome.
While they were waiting outside for the change-horses to be hitched, the Ranger made a request of the old soldier.
"Wish you'd swap places with me, Sam."
"Sure. I'd a heap ruther sit outside. Say, that drummer hadn't ought to worry Miss Ramona. She's not feelin' very peart, anyhow. I reckon she set the world an' all by that scalawag brother of hers."
"He's not goin' to trouble her any more, Sam."
The ex-Confederate looked at the narrow-flanked young man with an alert question in his eye. If "Tex" Roberts was going to take a hand, the salesman was certainly riding for a fall.
The salesman had made up his mind to sit beside Miss Wadley for the rest of the journey. He emerged from the dining-room at her heels and was beside her to offer a hand into the stage.
Ramona gave him a look of reproach and entreaty. She was near tears. The man from St. Louis smiled confidently.
"I know a good thing when I see it," he whispered. "I'll ride beside you and keep off the rough-necks, Miss Wadley."
A heavy heel smashed down on the toes of his neat shoe and crunched round. A hard elbow bumped up forcefully against his chin as if by accident. A muscular hand caught the loose fat of his plump stomach and tightened like a vise. The dapper salesman opened his mouth in a shriek of pain.
"Indigestion?" asked the Ranger sympathetically, and his sinewy fingers twisted in the cushion of flesh they gripped. "I'll get you somethin' good for it in a minute."
Roberts flung the man back and rearranged the seating inside so that the drover sat beside Ramona as before dinner. Then he tucked an arm under that of the St. Louis man and led him back into the stage station. The salesman jerked along beside him unhappily. His wrist, wrenched by Roberts in a steady pressure of well-trained muscles, hurt exquisitely. When at last he was flung helplessly into a chair, tears of pain and rage filled his eyes. Never in the course of a cushioned and pampered life had he been so manhandled.
"My God, you brute, you've killed me!" he sobbed.