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I sure ain't going to need it to buy dishes and rocking chairs and pictures and I was going t' git her a piano oh, hell!" He still rode slowly, after that, but he did not bother over the figures that stood for Dilly's debts. He sat humped over the saddle-horn like an old man and stared at the trail and at the forefeet of Barney coming down pluck, pluck with leisurely regularity in the dust.
He had heard a great deal, from his sister, of the Stones, and their beautiful niece, Louise Lacharme. He was enthusiastic about the Moonstone Cañon. He grew even more enthusiastic after meeting Louise. She came riding her black pony Boyar down the afternoon hillside a picture that he never forgot. Her gray sombrero hung on the saddle-horn. Her gloves were tucked in her belt.
His horse, from which the riders of the Concho had aforetime shot turkeys, broke into a kind of reminiscent lope, which quickened as the turkeys wheeled and ran swiftly through the timberland. Sundown clung to the saddle-horn as the pony took fallen logs at top speed.
As she reached it she held her breath and her teeth dug into her colorless lips. But when another section of the winding gorge lay before her, silent, empty save for scattered boulders and a few scanty bits of stunted vegetation, one small, gloved hand fluttered to her breast, then dropped, clenched, against the saddle-horn.
With a spring he was in the saddle and had slipped the quirt from the saddle-horn to his wrist. He would need that quirt, as he had no spurs. Round swung Tenlow, cursing. Black Boyar shot across the meadow, the quirt falling at each jump. The tramp glanced back. Tenlow's right hand went up and his gun roared once, twice....
"Well," said Sir Bleoberis, "you shall freely have that goblet if you can take it from me, and if you will look, you will see where it hangs here from my saddle-horn. But I may tell you that I do not believe that there is any Cornish knight who may take away that goblet against my will." "As for that," said Sir Tristram, "we shall see in a little while how it may be."
"Thought they'd put it over easy," he growled behind set teeth, one clenched, gloved hand thumping the saddle-horn. "Saw the notice in the papers, of course, and decided it would be a cinch to rob a dead man. Well, there's a surprise coming to somebody that'll make mine look like thirty cents." His lips relaxed in a grim smile, which presently merged into an expression of puzzled wonder.
Take your time; for I left my gun on my saddle-horn. "Old Mac laughs, and he says to me: 'Pumpin' lead into the best ranch- boss in West Texas don't seem to me good business policy. I don't know where I could get as good a one. It's the son-in-law idea, Webb, that makes me admire for to use you as a target. You ain't my idea for a member of the family.
And she had the doubtful satisfaction of seeing him doubled over the saddle-horn in a paroxysm of laughter when she led him to the historical washout and recounted the feat of the dead Indians with which he had made a safe passing for her. "Well, they did it in history," she defended at last, her cheeks redder than was perfectly normal.
It was nearly dark now; only the crests of the ridges were plain against the luminous sky; in the brushy bottom of the arroyo the shadows were deep. Alaire had no wish to be left alone with the prisoner. With bridle-rein and carbine in his left hand, the Ranger halted, then, stooping for Anto's discarded cartridge-belt, he looped it over his saddle-horn.
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