"Welcome, Miss Sanderson, to the best the Twin Star outfit has to offer.
I hope you will enjoy your visit, which is going to be a long one."

To a Mexican woman, who had come out to the porch in answer to his call,
he delivered the girl, charging her duty in two quick sentences of
Spanish. The woman nodded her understanding, and led Phyllis inside.

Weaver noticed with delight that his captive's eye met his steadily,
with the defiant fierceness of some hunted wild thing. Here was a woman
worth taming, even though she was still a girl in years. His exultant
eye, returning from the last glimpse of the lissom figure as it
disappeared, met the gaze of Keller. That young man was watching him
with an odd look of challenge on his usually impassive face.

The cattleman felt the spur of a new antagonism stirring his blood.
There was something almost like a sneer on his lips as he spoke:

"Sorry to lose your company, Mr. Keller. But if you're homesteading, of
course, we'll have to let you go back to the hills right away. Couldn't
think of keeping you from that spring plowing that's waiting to be
done."

"You're putting up a different line of talk from what you did. How about
that charge of rustling against me, Mr. Weaver? Don't you want to hold
me while you investigate it?"

"No, I reckon not. Your lady friend gives you a clean bill of health.
She may or may not be lying. I'm not so sure myself. But without her the
case against you falls."