Mr. Birkin blushed. "Oh, no, not at all! I was wondering if you had lost any."
"Nobody would rustle cattle from a lady, I hope? At any rate, I haven't missed any yet. The folks down in the Cove have, though."
"Yes, I heard they had. That breed rode over to see if he could get a line on them. It's hard luck; that Charlie Fox seems a fine, hard-working boy, don't you think?"
"Yes-s," said Billy Louise shyly, "he seems real nice." She looked away and bit her lip self-consciously as she spoke.
The two men swallowed the bait like a hungry fish. They glanced at each other and winked knowingly. Billy Louise saw them from the tail of her downcast eye, and permitted herself a little sigh of relief. They would be the more ready now to accept at its face value her statement concerning Ward, unless they credited her with the feat of being in love with the two men at the same time.
"Well, I'm sorry Charlie Fox has been tapped off, too. He's a mighty fine chap," declared Floyd with transparent heartiness, his round eyes dwelling curiously upon the face of Billy Louise.
"Yes, I must be going," said that young woman self-consciously. "I've quite a circle to ride yet. I hope you locate the rustlers, and if there's anything I can do--if I see or hear anything that seems to be a clew--I'll let you know right away. I've been keeping my eyes open for some trace of them, and--so has Char--Mr. Fox." Then she blushed and told them good-by very hastily and loped off up the ridge.
"Bark up that tree for awhile, you two!" she said, with a twist of her lips, when she was well away from them. "You--you darned idiots! To go prowling around Ward's place, just as if-- Ward'll take a shot at them if he catches them nosing through his stock!" She scowled at a big D cow that thrust her head out of an alder thicket and sent Blue in after her. Frowning, she watched the animal go lumbering down the hill toward the Wolverine. "Just because he's a stranger and doesn't mix with people, and minds his own business and is trying to get a start, they're suspicious--as if a man has no right to-- Well, I think I managed to head them off, anyway."
Her satisfaction lasted while she rode to the next ridge. Then the little devils of doubt came a-swarming and a-whispering. She had said she knew all about Ward; well, she did, to a greater extent than others knew. But--she wondered if she did not know too much, or if she knew enough. There were some things-She turned, upon the crest of the ridge, and looked away toward the pine-dotted height locally known as the Big Hill, beyond which Ward's claim lay snuggled out of sight in its little valley. "I've a good mind to ride over there right now, and make him tell me," she said to herself. She stopped Blue and sat there undecided, while the wind lifted a lock of hair and flipped it across her cheek. "If he cares--like he says he cares--he'll tell me," she murmured. "I don't believe it's wolves. And of course it isn't--what those fellows seemed to think. But--where did he get the money for all that?" She sighed distressfully. "I hate to ask him; he'd think I didn't trust him, and I do. I do trust him!" There was the little head-devil of doubt, and she fought him fiercely. "I do! I do!" She thrust the declaration of faith like a sword through the doubt-devil that clung and whispered. "Dear Ward! I do trust you!" She blinked back tears and bit her lips to stop their quivering. "But, darn it, I don't see why you didn't tell me!" There it was: a perfectly human, woman-resentment toward a nagging mystery.