He looked up at me then, and I will not try to say what was in his face, because I do not know all of it. There was anger in it, a great deal, held down hard like a fire banked for the night. There was something else in it I have seen in the faces of men who have been told by a doctor what they already knew. And there was something I can only call calculation, the look of a sergeant who has been in a fight before and is counting his ammunition.
"Why'd you come out here, Mr. Vaughan?" he said. "You could have kept quiet. Nobody would ever have known."
"I'd have known."
"That's a thing men say."
"It's a thing I'm saying," I said. "I'm not saying it well. I came because they're your cattle and I've got the proof of it, and you've got the right to know what I know before they go on the cars. What you do with it is your business. What I do with it is mine. I'll stand up and say what I've told you to anybody you want me to say it to."
"You know who Ballantyne is," Lettie said. It was the first thing she had said since I sat down. "You know what that man can do to you."
"I know it, ma'am."