The sheriff retired to the dining-room, whence came presently snatches of cheerful talk between the prisoner and his captors. In their company Jack Kilmeny was frankly a Western frontiersman.
"You passed close to me Wednesday night at the fork of Rainbow above the J K ranch. I was lying on a ledge close to the trail. You discussed whether to try Deer Creek or follow Rainbow to its headwaters," the miner said.
"That was sure one on us. Hadn't been for the kid, I don't reckon we ever would have took you," a deputy confessed.
"What beats me is why you weren't a hundred miles away in Routt County over in yore old stamping ground," another submitted.
"I had my reasons. I wasn't looking to be caught anyhow. Now you've got me you want to watch me close," the prisoner advised.
"We're watching you. Don't make any mistake about that and try any fool break," Gill answered, quite undisturbed.
"He's the coolest hand I ever heard," Farquhar said to the party on the porch. "If I were a highwayman I'd like to have him for a partner."
"He's not a highwayman, I tell you," corrected Moya.
"I hope he isn't, but I'm afraid he is," India confided in a whisper. "For whatever else he is, Jack Kilmeny is a man."
"Very much so," the captain nodded, between troubled puffs of his pipe.
"And I'm going to stand by him," announced his sister with a determined toss of her pretty head.
Moya slipped an arm quickly around her waist. She was more grateful for this support than she could say. It meant that India at least had definitely accepted the American as a relative with the obligation that implied. Both girls waited for Ned Kilmeny to declare himself, for, after all, he was the head of the family. He smoked in silence for a minute, considering the facts in his stolid deliberate fashion.
The excitement of the girl he loved showed itself in the dusky eyes sparkling beneath the soft mass of blue-black hair, in the glow of underlying blood that swept into her cheeks. She hoped--oh, how she hoped!--that the officer would stand by his cousin. In her heart she knew that if he did not--no matter how right his choice might be in principle--she never would like him so well again. He was a man who carried in his face and in his bearing the note of fineness, of personal distinction, but if he were to prove a formalist at heart, if he were going to stickle for an assurance of his kinsman's innocence before he came to the prisoner's aid, Moya would have no further use for him.