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Coaley, feeling his rider's mood, sensing also the portent of the heavy, heat-saturated atmosphere and the rolling thunder heads, slowed his springy trot to a walk and tossed his head uneasily from side to side. Then, quite without warning, Lance wheeled the horse short around and touched the reeking flanks with his heels.
Lance roused himself from gloomy speculations and looked back also, but he could not see anything behind them save a circling hawk and the gray monotone of the barren plateau, so he urged Coaley in among the boulders. There must be something back there, of course. Coaley was too intelligent a horse to make a mistake. But it might be some drifting range stock, or perhaps a stray horse.
There had been no urgent need to take Coaley home at once, but it was an excuse, and Lance used it. He could not think, he could not face his own trouble when he was near Mary Hope. She drove everything else from his mind, and Lance knew that some things must not be driven from his mind. He had set himself to do certain things.
He knew it, knew just how loud were its mutterings, knew that it was gathering swiftly, pushing up over the horizon faster than did the storm of the morning. He would not put Coaley down the Slide trail, but took him around by the wagon road. They plodded along at a walk, Coaley's stiffened muscles giving him the gait of an old horse.
In two or three minutes they seemed ten to Lance he saw the head and shoulders of a rider just emerging from the gully he himself had so lately followed. Back on Coaley, following the winding trail, Lance pondered the matter. The way he had come was no highway no trail that any rider would follow on any business save one. But just why should he be followed?
He did not bare his teeth and threaten; he reached out like a rattler and nipped Rab's neck so neatly that a spot the size of a quarter showed pink where the hair had been. Rab squealed, whirled and kicked, but Coaley was not there at that particular moment. He came back with the battle light in his eyes, and Rab clattered away in a stiff-legged run.
Then, climbing through chokecherry thickets up a draw that led by winding ways to higher ground, Lance stopped and scrutinized the bottomland over which he had passed. Coaley stood alert, watching also that back trail, his ears turned forward, listening. After a moment, he began to take little mincing steps sidewise, pulling impatiently at the reins.
"Belle, where did dad and the boys go?" "Oh fussing with the stock," said Belle vaguely, her eyes clouding a little. "We're getting so many cattle it keeps Tom on the go day and night, seems to me. And he will keep buying more all the while. Did did you want to go with them, honey? I guess Tom never thought you might. You've been away so long. You'd better not ride Coaley, Lance.
This gentleman, on hearing the circumstances of the case, pronounced the patient perfectly secure from future infection. "The following facts are also a striking proof of the truth of your observations on this subject: "In the year 1789 I inoculated three children of Mr. Coaley, of Hurst farm in this county.
He sat down and disposed himself comfortably, got up, muttered something about forgetting to turn Coaley out, and left the house. Belle turned and looked at Lance. "Honey, it's that kind of thing " "I used to think, Belle, that you had the bluest eyes in the whole world," Lance drawled quizzically. "They're blue enough, in all conscience by heck, Belle! Does a Lorrigan always love blue eyes?"
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