CHAPTER XVIYou will notice that in all of this Randal had controlled his joy pretty well on the subject of how I had handled Rusty McArdle and the rest. But I didn’t hold that against him. You can’t expect a pint measure to hold a bushel, and there simply wasn’t room in Randal for anything generous, like praise. What he aimed at was to show me that I had simply managed to finish off the first bit of my job, with a lot worse stuff coming along behind it.
I forgot about him the minute that I left the room. I had stayed away a lot longer than I intended, and right then I would rather of lost my hopes of that ranch than to of give up that kid—he meant so much to me.
I tried my door and found it locked, just the same as it had been before—and there was no lamplight leaking out through the cra
