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He looked so queer, Kate wanted to laugh, but she was too far from home to dare. He presently put his head conveniently in between Sawdy and Lefever and offered some news of his own: "There's been a big electric storm in the up country, Sawdy; the telephones are on the bum." "How's she going to get to Doubleday's tonight, McAlpin?" asked Sawdy abruptly of the newcomer.
"I hope now," retorted de Spain, but without any show of resentment, "you understand I can't." "No," persisted Lefever good-naturedly, "I only realize, Henry, that this wasn't your day for the job." The door of the outer office opened and Jeffries, the superintendent, walked into the room; he had just come from Medicine Bend in his car. The two men rose to greet him.
Beyond this nothing could be learned from Bull, who was persuaded without difficulty by Lefever to abandon the idea of riding to Calabasas through the rain, and to spend the night with him in the neighborhood, wherever fancy, the rain, and the wind which was rising should dictate. While the two were talking de Spain tried to slip away, unobserved by Lefever, on his errand.
He named four: first, Farrell Kennedy, who was in town, and said nobody should go if he didn't; Frank Elpaso, the Texan; the Englishman, Tommie Meggeson; and Wickwire, if he could be located any one of them, Lefever knew, could give an account of himself under all circumstances. While Scott was getting his men together, de Spain, accompanied by Lefever, was riding toward Music Mountain.
"What are you talking about?" demanded Lefever, to bring out the story. "You never saw it." "I'll tell you what I saw." Only those who knew Laramie well could have told how keenly he was listening. "I drove down Hill Street," said the doctor, "just after the funeral started, and sat there, quiet, to one side, waiting for it to pass; a doctor's got no business around funerals.
Sawdy volunteered to save time by fetching Belle Shockley from the hotel, and while McAlpin and Lefever inspected and discussed the horses for the condition of which McAlpin, as foreman of Kitchen's barn, was responsible Kate stood, listener and onlooker. Everything was new and interesting. Four horses champed impatiently under the arc-light swinging in the street, and looked quite fit.
It told of a man shot in his tracks as he was running toward the house and, in the judgment of these men, fatally shot for, while his companions spread like a fan in front of him, Lefever got off his horse and, bending intently over the sudden page torn out of a man's life, recast the scene that had taken place, where he stood, half an hour earlier.
None, indeed, but a physical giant, which Lefever was, could maintain so constant and visible a nervous moisture in the face of the extraordinary atmospheric evaporation of the mountain plateaus. And to de Spain, on this occasion, even the glistening beads on his companion's forehead were annoying, for he knew that he himself was properly responsible for their presence.
"Why, it's like this, Barb," returned Lefever, nothing abashed. "When I seen you crossing down there at the forks I thought maybe you'd lost your Bibles in the creek. That's the way you acted. But when I seen you and Harry Van Horn and Tom Stone loading your rifles in the timber, I reckoned you must be comin' up to ask Jim to run for sheriff on the cattle ticket."
"'Bout fourteen mile," answered Bradley, "to the ford." "What time should I get there?" asked Kate again. Bradley stood pat. "What time'll she get there, Bill?" demanded Lefever. "Twelve o'clock," hazarded Bradley tersely. "Or," he added, "I'll stop when I pass the ranch 'n' tell 'em to send a rig down in the mornin'." "That would take you out of your way," Kate objected. "Not a great ways."
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