"_Buy_ it?" Welborne gasped, and stared as if unable to grasp her meaning. "You don't mean that you--"
"Well, well!" Henley cried, "this _is_ a surprise. Here I've been rowing you up Salt River for your puny little debt to me, and you now say you are able to own a big chunk of real estate unencumbered. Why, you must have struck oil somewhere. My, my, my!"
"I don't tell my business to everybody." Dixie, now standing, had thrust her hand into the pocket of her skirt and was drawing out the bills. "Here's the money, Mr. Welborne."
A snort that could have been heard to the front door issued from Welborne's fluttering nostrils. He pushed the money from him, writhed and tottered, and as he glared furiously at Henley he screamed:
"It's a trick put up between you. I see it, but I won't be buncoed in no such way. Do you hear me?--no such way!"
He was turning off when Henley, now a different man, stepped before him. "You are going to act fair for once, you old thief," he said, a gray look of determination about his mouth and in his fixed eyes. "You've been swindling this orphan girl all these years, and you are going to abide by your own signed contract. You are going to do it, or, by all that's holy, I'll head a gang of mountain-men that will drag you out of your bed and lay a hundred lashes on your bare back."
"I'll see you in hell first!" Welborne shrieked, and, darting past Henley, he hurried from the store as fast as his tottering gait would take him.
"We lost, after all!" Dixie cried, and, sinking back in her chair, the money clutched in her hand, she burst into tears.
"Not yet, not _plumb_ yet, little girl!" Henley was unconscious of the vast tenderness of his tone. "Don't cry; be the brave little trick you've always been."
"I'm not thinking of myself, really I'm not," she sobbed. "But my mother and aunt have heard about it, and they are awfully upset. They love the place, and the thought of leaving and being destitute is running them crazy."
"Look here. Let me have the money," Henley said, his eyes flashing dangerously. "You go home and be easy. Leave him to me. He sha'n't rob you like that; I'll drag his bones from his dirty hide and rattle 'em through the streets before I'll let 'im. This is a Christian community, and God rules."