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"Say, lookit here, Racey " "When you get to the ranch tell Swing to come along soon as he can," interrupted Racey. "I'll be expecting him." Tuckety-tuck! Tuckety-tuck! Somewhere beyond the cottonwood grove surrounding Moccasin Spring a galloping horse was coming in. A moment later horse and rider shot past the tail of the cottonwood grove, and bore down on the house. "Marie!" exclaimed Racey.
Pablo turned to his horse and took down from the horn of the saddle a gunny sack tied to it. This he opened. From it he drew a tin box that had been badly blistered with heat. "It is Señor Gordon's tin box. After you carried him to the house here the other night I found it under a cottonwood. So I took it home with me. They are papers. Important Is it not so?" "Yes.
Between these canyons the river has a low but rather narrow flood plain, with cottonwood groves scattered here and there, and a chaparral of mesquite bearing beans and thorns. Four hundred miles above its mouth and more than two hundred miles above the Gila, the Colorado has a second tributary "Bill Williams' River" it is called by excessive courtesy. It is but a muddy creek.
Scarcely a minute passed, after the time that the first team took the road, without a loaded wagon, packed to the sideboards, moving along the dusty road into the darkness of the desert. Three travelers on horseback rode in the opposite direction. Their destination was Cottonwood Bend. Two of them were Emerson Crawford and David Sanders.
Bushes and undergrowth were dense above the steep canyon walls, which were bare. Willows, alder-thickets, and a few cottonwood trees lined the shores. Meanwhile the current had quickened, almost imperceptibly at first, but enough to put us on our guard.
After putting my horse into the corral and throwing him down some hay I strode into the low hut, made partly of turf and partly of cottonwood logs, and speedily warmed myself before the fire. We had a good warm supper, of bread, potatoes, fried venison, and tea. My two companions grew very sociable and began to talk freely over their pipes. There were two bunks one above the other.
"Why, uncle," exclaimed Clarice, "it is Winnemak!" But I must explain how Clarice came to know the Indian, whom, at the first moment, no one else had recognized. Not far off, in a grove of Cottonwood trees up the valley, there came forth from the side of the hill a spring of singularly bright and cool water, of which Uncle Jeff was particularly fond; as were, indeed, the rest of us.
Many times, while watching them, he had been fascinated by their grace, and now, sitting in the saddle, he caught himself wondering if the influence of a bite were great enough to cause the person bitten to imitate the snake. He laughed when this thought struck him and drove his spurs sharply against Mustard's flanks, riding forward past the cottonwood at which he had been staring.
His eyes grew hot. The morning passed slowly. When finally the shadow of the cottonwood tree at the corner of the pasture pointed directly to the north, the boy unhitched, cleaned the cultivator shovels carefully with a handful of grass and placed them upon the hooks.
Hereupon the outlaws did not show any laziness in their alacrity to cover Bill's money as it lay on the grass. Somebody had a watch, and they all sat down, dividing attention between the timepiece and the tree. The minutes dragged by to the accompaniment of various jocular remarks anent a fool and his money. When four and three-quarter minutes had passed a turtle-dove alighted in the cottonwood.
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