“Yes. There was a chap down on the spur. He orter turned them; but—he funked it.”
Lou smiled a very little, blinking round at the tense faces. He recognised the bitter, unbending tenets of duty whereby Ted Douglas scourged himself and his men. Scannell’s eyes were not good to see. Always he had ridden in the first flight in the old days.
“And the man who funked was?”
“Jimmie Blaine,” said Ted Douglas, and stood unmoving, his hard hands shot up at his sides, and the whole bright earth smudgy before him.
“Was he out with you this morning?”
“No. I couldn’t let him ride for Mains again.”
Scannell’s keen eyes met Ted’s for one instant of understanding.
“You’ve done more for Mains than that,” he said. “That’ll do. Jimmie Blaine! Come over here a minute.”
Scannell sacked Jimmie in three pointed sentences that sent the boys to the branding with new grit to bite on, and amaze in their souls.
“I believe Ted thinks more o’ Mains then he do o’ Jimmie,” cried Moody, goggle-eyed, and scruffing a kicking calf for the iron. “Thinks more o’ Mains then he do o’ us! He’d tell on us if he reckoned he orter! Us!”
Lou pressed on the sizzling iron, and the laugh danced up in his eyes.
