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Immediately they remembered that Cottonwood Spring was on Lorrigan land, that Lorrigan money had paid for the material that went into the schoolhouse, that Lorrigan labor had built it, Lorrigan generosity had given it over to the public as represented by Mary Hope Douglas and the children who came to her to be taught.
The night wind swished the grasses; dark storm clouds blotted out the northern stars; the prairie wolves mourned dismally. Day broke cold, wan, threatening, under a leaden sky. The hunters traveled thirty miles by noon, and halted in a hollow where a stream flowed in wet season. Cottonwood trees were bursting into green; thickets of prickly thorn, dense and matted, showed bright spring buds.
Curly raised his glass and the cowpunchers joined in uproarious song: "We'll string him up to a cottonwood limb An' dig his grave in under him, We'll tromp down the clods, an' we won't give a damn 'Cause he'll never kill another cow-man, Ah wi yi yippie i oo-o-!"
All the cottonwood logs which had finally been carried down the stream after having been deposited on a hundred shores, found here their final resting place. About each cluster of logs an island was forming, covered with a rank grass and tules. Ramified channels wound here and there. Two or three times we found ourselves in a shallow channel, and with some difficulty retraced our way.
Shortly the solid ground had drawn nearer; so that often we passed long stretches of earth standing above the tule-grown water. Along these strips grew sycamore and cottonwood trees of great size, and hanging vines of the wild grape. The trees were as yet bare of leaves, but everything else was green and beautiful.
Finally, two of them escorted him to a small Indian camp, about a mile distant, which was hidden from view by a sandy knoll, where, in some cottonwood brush, beside a small creek, they found half a dozen tepees, around which were squatted twenty or thirty disreputable-looking Indians, their ponies tethered in the brush near by.
The office, a box-like enclosure, was separated from the public room of the Miners' Hotel by a thin partition; and the operator, who was also news and express agent at Cottonwood, had closed his window, and was lounging by his news-stand preparatory to going home. Without, the first monotonous rain of the season was dripping from the porches of the hotel in the waning light of a December day.
At night when they encamped the soft murmur of the river was in their ears, and the cool, dry wind fanned them quietly as they sat down near a cluster of thick cottonwood to smoke their pipe, chat and prepare for the night's rest. They made a good meal from their mountain sheep, and gorging Terror, threw the rest away as they deemed it hardly fit for further use.
It also was a long, low frame building with some great cottonwood trees before it and a few palms with their infinite and haunting suggestions of the tropics. It was with a sense of mounting excitement which still held that strong element of exultation that Hanson crossed the porch, opened the door and walked in.
He found in one of the depressions between the swells a stunted cottonwood, to which he hitched his horse, knowing it would be well hidden there from the observation of the herd. He then advanced on foot. He had heard that the antelope was a slave to its own curiosity, and through that weakness he intended to secure his game.
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