I had that idea all along that
you've had this summer: getting hold of the Lazy A and fixing it up so
your dad would have a place to come back to. I never said anything,
because talking don't come natural to me like it does to some, and I'd
rather do a thing first and then talk about it afterwards if I have to.

"So I hung on to what money I had saved up along; I was going to get me
a bunch of cattle and fix up that homestead of mine some day, and maybe
have a little home." His eyes went surreptitiously to her face, and
lingered there wistfully. "So after the trouble I buckled down to work
and saved a little faster, if anything. It looked to me like there
wasn't much hope of doing anything for your dad till his sentence ran
out, so I never said anything about it. Long as Carl didn't try to
sell it to anybody else, I just waited and got together all the money I
could. I didn't see as there was anything else to do."

Jean was chewing a corner of her lip, and was staring out of the
window. "I didn't know I was stealing your thunder, Lite," she said
dispiritedly. "Why didn't you tell me?"

'Wasn't anything to tell--till there was something to tell. Now, this
telegram here,--this is what I started out to talk about. It'll be
just as well if you know it before we get to Helena. I showed it to
Art, and he thought the same as I did. You know,--or I reckon you
don't, because I never said anything,--away last summer, along about
the time you went to work for Burns, I got to thinking things over, and
I wondered if Carl didn't have something on his mind about that
killing. So I wrote to Rossman. I didn't much like the way he handled
your dad's case, but he knew all the ins and outs, so I could talk to
him without going away back at the beginning. He knew Carl, too, so
that made it easier.

"I wrote and told him how Carl was prowling around through the house
nights, and the like of that, and to look up the title to the Lazy A--"

"Why wouldn't you wait and let me buy it myself?" Jean asked him with
just a shade of sharpness in her voice. "You knew I wanted to."

"So I got Rossman started, quite a while back. He thought as I did,
that Carl was acting mighty funny. I was with Carl more than you was,
and I could tell he had something laying heavy on his mind. But then,
the rest of us had things laying pretty heavy on our minds, too, that
wasn't guilt; so there wasn't any way to tell what was bothering Carl."
Li