“Hallo, Rip!” he shouted—that you?”
“He rode in with me,” said Josefa. “I lost my way and was late.”
“Much obliged,” called the cattle king. “Stop over, Rip, and ride to camp in the morning.”
But Givens would not. He would push on to camp. There was a bunch of steers to start off on the trail at daybreak, He said good-night, and trotted away.
An hour later, when the lights were out, Josefa, in her night-robe, came to her door and called to the king in his own room across the brick-paved hallway:
“Say, pop, you know that old Mexican lion they call the ‘Gotch-eared Devil’—the one that killed Gonzales, Mr. Martin’s sheep herder, and about fifty calves on the Salado range? Well, I settled his hash this afternoon over at the White Horse Crossing. Put two balls in his head with my .38 while he was on the jump. I knew him by the slice gone from his left ear that old Gonzales cut off with his machete. You couldn’t have made a better shot yourself, daddy.”
“Bully for you!” thundered Whispering Ben from the darkness of the royal chamber.
