"No matter who told me, young man," he exclaimed; "I got it
straight, and you can take it straight from me. You either give
up Buck McKee or the Sweetwater Ranch. Snake-in-the-grass!" he
was working himself up into false passion; "it is you, ungrateful
boy, who are sinking the serpent's tooth in the hand that would
have helped you. I tell you that I intended to make you foreman,
though Sage-brush Charley is an older and better man. It was for
Dick's sake I would have done it."
"No!" Bud burst forth; "for your guilty conscience's sake. It
would have been to pay for stepping into Dick's place in the
heart of a faithless girl. To hell with your job; I'm through
with you!"
And, leaping on his horse, Bud rode furiously back to rejoin Buck
McKee in Florence.
Jack Payson's purpose was now cinched to suppress Dick Lane's
letter until Echo Allen was irrevocably joined to him in
marriage. He argued with himself that she loved him, Jack
Payson, yet so loyal was she by nature that if Dick Lane returned
before the wedding and claimed her, she would sacrifice her love
to her sense of duty. This would ruin her life, he reasoned, and
he could not permit it. There was honesty in this argument, but
he vitiated it by deferring to act upon the suggestion that
naturally arose with it: Why, then, not take Jim Allen, Echo's
father, to whom her happiness was the chief purpose in life, into
confidence in regard to the matter? There will be time enough to
tell the Colonel before the wedding, he thought.
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