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Updated: June 14, 2025
He shot a glance at Calumet's face it was expressionless. There was a silence until Taggart reached the low hill in the valley where on the day following his coming to the Lazy Y Calumet had seen Lonesome, before the dog had begun the stalk that had ended in its death. Then Calumet turned to Dade, a derisive light in his eyes. "Do you reckon Betty will be glad to see him?"
Calumet's right hand did not seem to move, but before Taggart could get his weapon free of its holster he saw the sombre muzzle of a forty-five frowning at him from Calumet's hip and he quickly drew his own hand away empty. "Shucks," Calumet's voice came slowly into the silence that had fallen slowly and softly and with apparently genuine deprecation.
But if he interfered with him, if, for instance, he became too friendly with Betty, there would come an end to Calumet's tolerance. And so there was a glint of speculative distrust in Calumet's eyes as he sat and watched Dade ponder. Calumet was in no good humor. He felt like baiting Dade.
For a moment, standing beside his pony, Calumet watched the boy, and as he stood a queer pallor overspread his face and his lips tightened oddly. For something in the boy's appearance, in the idea of his exhibition of grief over his dog, which Malcolm had said he loved, smote Calumet's heart.
He ain't none nice, not at all, takin' dogs as dogs. He's nothin' but a fool yellow mongrel." Bob contemplated his benefactor, sourly at first, for already he and the dog were friends, and thus Calumet's derogatory words were in the nature of a base slander. But he reasoned that all was not well between Betty and Calumet, and therefore perhaps Calumet had not meant them in exactly that spirit.
After dinner Calumet went out again to his work, apparently carefree and unconcerned, if we are to omit those thoughts in which Dade and Betty figured, Dade watched him with much curiosity, for the incident of the day before was still vivid in his mind, and if there had been. mystery in Calumet's action in inviting Taggart to the Lazy Y there had been no mystery in the words he had spoken outside the Red Dog Saloon immediately afterward: "It's my game, do you hear?"
The expression of Calumet's face was as hard and inscrutable as the desert itself; the latter's filmy haze did not more surely shut out the mysteries behind it than did Calumet's expression veil the emotions of his heart.
Taggart had left town hours before him, he was a coward, and shooting from ambush is a coward's game. Calumet's blood leaped a little faster in his veins. He would settle for good with Neal Taggart. But he did not move except to draw one of his six-shooters and push its muzzle over the edge of the gully.
"Get out of here, you damned fools!" he said; "do you want to get hurt?" They continued to come on in spite of this warning, but when they reached the foot of the little slope that led to the ridge at the edge of which was Calumet's gully, they halted, looking up at Calumet inquiringly.
And he looked fairly into Calumet's eyes over the length of the timber. "I'm gassin' to suit myself," said Calumet; "if that don't size up right to you you can pull your freight." "You're a false alarm," said Dade bluntly; "you drive me plumb weary." Before his voice had died away Calumet's hand had flashed to his pistol butt. Why he did not draw the weapon was a mystery known only to himself.
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