But what could I do?"
"You poor little lamb," murmured the man. "And when did you find
out who you were?"
"I heard you talking to him the night you took him back to
Epitaph, and then I began to piece things together. You remember
you went over the whole story with him again just before we
reached the town."
"And you knew it was you I was talking about?"
"I didn't know. But when you mentioned the locket and the map, I
knew. Then it seemed to me that since this man Henderson had lost
so many years of his life trying to save me I must do something
for him. So I asked you to take me with you. I had been a boy so
long I didn't think you would know the difference, and you did
not. If I hadn't dressed as a girl that time you would not know
yet."
"Maybe, and maybe not," he smiled. "Point is, I do know, and it
makes a heap of difference to me."
"Yes, I know," she said hurriedly. "I'm more trouble now."
"That ain't it," he was beginning, when a thought brought him up
short. As the daughter of Webb Mackenzie this girl was no longer
a penniless outcast, but the heiress of one-half interest in the
big Rocking Chair Ranch, with its fifteen thousand head of
cattle.
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