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On Main Street in the evening every one speculated on the Missourian's purpose in coming to Bidwell. The forty dollars a month paid him by the Wheeling railroad could not have tempted such a man. They were sure of that. Steve Hunter the jeweler's son had returned to town from a course in a business college at Buffalo, New York, and hearing the talk became interested.
"Any sort." A frosty gleam crept into the old Missourian's eye. "I'll keep hands off," said he. He strode on twenty feet. "I got an extra gun " said he. "Thanks," Bob interrupted. "But I'll get organized better when I get home." "Hope you git him," said the old man by way of farewell. "He won't git nothing out of me," he shot back over his shoulder. Bob now knew exactly where he was going.
He screamed in panic terror, dropped his brandished gun and reeled backward, clawing at his own throat. For out of the eerie darkness, something had launched itself at him something silent and terrible, that had flown to the Missourian's aid. Down with a crash went the German, on his back. He rolled against the Missourian, who promptly sought to grapple with him.
The majordomo watched him walk down to the corral. He could not swear to it, but he was none the less sure that the Missourian's keen eye was fixed upon a sweat-stained horse that had been traveling the hills all night. Murder from the Chaparral Webb was just leaving for one of his ranches lower down the river when a horseman galloped up.
Passing out of the stable-yard he recognized the Missourian's voice in whispered conversation with the proprietor, but the two men withdrew into the shadow as he approached. An ill-defined uneasiness came over him; he knew the proprietor, who also seemed to know the Missourian, and this evident avoidance of him was significant.
Wherefore his flagrant breach of discipline in shoving his palm across the mouth of his superior officer. And as he was committing this breach of discipline, he heard the Missourian's strangled gasp of: "Why didn't anybody ever tell me Germans was covered with fur?" In a flash Mahan understood. Wheeling, he stooped low and flung out both arms in a wide-sweeping circle.
The car-dumping apparatus, that had sold for two hundred thousand dollars, had given Steve Hunter money to buy the plant-setting machine factory, and with Tom Butterworth to start manufacturing the corn-cutters, had affected the lives of fewer people, but it had carried the Missourian's name into other places and had also made a new kind of poetry in railroad yards and along rivers at the back of cities where ships are loaded.
The Missourian had a drawlingly soft voice the dog liked, and he used to talk to Bruce as if the latter were another human. For all these reasons and because Mahan was too busy and too grumpy to bother with him Bruce elected to stay where he was, for a while, and share the Missourian's vigil. So, when the rest of the party moved along to the next sentry-go, the dog remained.
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