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It was nearly ten o'clock when Sing Pete stopped the grub-wagon at the bunk-house; Pedro wrangled the saddle cavallard into the pasture below the barn; Parker and the cowboys jogged their bronchos to the stable door and the Ramblin' Kid, riding the Gold Dust maverick Captain Jack at her heels rode to the circular corral, jerked the saddle from the filly's back and turned the little roan stallion and the outlaw mare inside the corral.
She began talking, in a low voice, directly to the melancholy-looking cowboy. "To-day or some time when the others are away," she said caressingly, "you and I will dance all the dances by ourselves!" His heart leaped joyously. He was sorry, now, that he had not put on the white shirt. He resolved, after a while, to sneak out to the bunk-house and change.
In the bunk-house the men busied themselves in the polishing of buck-horns for the fashioning of a wonderful chair in whose make-up would be found neither nails nor glue, its parts being bound together by means of sinews and untanned buckskin thongs. The bateaux were set up and waiting at the head of the rollways.
Her memory went quickly back to those few words the morning she had wakened in the bunk-house and found the withered old woman watching her with tears in her eyes. Poor Mom Wallis, with her pretty girlhood all behind her and such a blank, dull future ahead! Poor, tired, ill-used, worn-out Mom Wallis! Margaret's heart went out to her.
He didn't say anything. But he took one of the lamps and a three-year-old Pall-Mall Magazine and shut himself up in the bunk-house. Then I was sorry. I tiptoed over to the door, and found it was locked. Then I went and got my mouth-organ and sat meekly down on the doorstep and began to play the Don't Be Cross waltz.
Small and dauntless he sat, a sparrow-hawk caught in a trap, and game to the end whatever end. "It's a trifle tardy to outline any policy about your demijohn," said he, seriously. "You folks had better come in and eat before you're beyond appreciating." "Ho, we'll eat your grub, boss. Sam's cooking goes." The buccaroo lurched out and away to the bunk-house, where new bellowing was set up.
Neither Tom nor Hippy knew whether they had been hit by the log that struck the gate-lever, or whether they had been made unconscious by their fall into the water. Both came to in a severe chill and were put to bed in the bunk-house, warmed with hot drinks and blankets, and soothed until they fell asleep.
It was the Mex all right, an' some o' his bunch." "And Lacy didn't know they were there?" "I reckon not; leastways he never said so, an' they'd only come a few days." "How many are they?" "Maybe a dozen; I don't just know. I saw eight, or ten, round the bunk-house, besides ol' Mendez an' that dude lieutenant of his, Juan Cateras. I ain't got no use fer that duck; I allers did want ter soak him.
He had not missed that swift exchange of glances that heralded his first appearance in the bunk-house; and though Slim McCabe particularly had been almost effusively affable, Buck was none the less convinced that his presence here was unwelcome. That business of the branding-iron, too, was puzzling. Was it merely a bit of rough but harmless horse-play or had it a deeper meaning?
He stopped at the bunk-house to tell the boys that they had nothing to do but eat breakfast before they saddled, and found them putting on overcoats and gloves and wrangling over the probable location of the herd that would have drifted in the night. So they ploughed in a straggling group to the house, where Annie-Many-Ponies was already pouring the coffee when they trooped in.
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