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"But if you will go to the Newman ranch-house for me and ask them to send the buckboard I'll be very grateful. I I feel dizzy, you know." "Gee whiz!" exclaimed the young man. "There's no time for me to run about the desert if you have a scorpion sting in your foot!" "Is a scorpion sting dangerous?" asked Rhoda. Then she added, languidly, "Not that I mind if it is!"
"Then in case she does go and you go with her, you will know nothing whatever about anything, of course, unless you get the story from her. What I fear is that which possibly may come of their interview. He may try to kill her don't be frightened. He will not succeed if you can only make sure he doesn't lead her away on horseback from the ranch-house or get her alone in a room.
"Well," she said, "perhaps you had better see my father. I think he has something to say to you." She left him, and, half an hour later, Waynefleet came up to Nasmyth, who was sunning himself outside the ranch-house. Like many other houses in that country, it stood beneath a few great firs on the edge of a desolate clearing, round which the primeval forest rose in an unbroken wall.
And it was amid the deepest nocturnal silence that Santa ran like a lapwing back to the ranch-house and there fell upon a cot and sobbed sobbed as though queens had hearts as simple ranchmen's wives have, and as though she would gladly make kings of prince-consorts, should they ride back again from over the hills and far away.
Judith, quick at decisions, looked him hard in the eye, heard his plan, and three minutes later Bud Lee, a revolver in his shirt, rode away from the ranch-house, headed toward Rocky Bend.
Now, in his dealings with the men under him, he brought here all that he had learned from a military life. He held himself aloof, was seldom to be found in the bunk-house, making his quarters in the old ranch-house. He was crisp and final in his orders and successful in exacting swift attention when he spoke and immediate obedience when he ordered.
"When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas," continued Baldy with Satanic sweetness, "you was some tallow. You had as much to say on the ranch as he did." "I did," admitted Webb, "up to the time he found out I was tryin' to get my rope over Santa's head. Then he kept me out on the range as far from the ranch-house as he could.
No light showed from the cabin in which the cowboys lived; he had not yet come in from the round-up. She unsaddled, and turned Pronto loose in the pasture. The windows of the long, low ranch-house were bright squares in the blackness, sending cheerful rays afar. Columbine wondered in trepidation if Jack Belllounds had come home. It required effort of will to approach the house.
"Goodness! you take it calmly, Frances," exclaimed Pratt. "Doesn't anything ruffle you?" She laughed shortly, and made no further remark. They rode on swiftly and within the hour saw the lights of Peckham's ranch-house. Their arrival brought the family to the door, as well as half a dozen punchers up from the bunk-house.
One hill lay between them and the old ranch-house which had been the headquarters for their gang so many days, when they saw a faint drift of smoke across the sky not a thin column of smoke such as rises from a chimney, but a broad stream of pale mist, as if a dozen chimneys were spouting wood-smoke at once. They exchanged glances and spurred their horses up the last slope.
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