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You ain't so bad off with old Montoya, but I sabe how you feel about herding sheep. You want to get to riding. But first you want to get a job. Now you go over to the Concho and tell Bailey 'he's the foreman that I sent you, and that if he'll give you a job, I'll outfit you. You can take your time paying for it." Pete blinked and choked a little.
Roth gazed at the boy, wondering if he would say anything about the six-gun. He liked Pete and yet he felt a little disappointed that Pete should have taken him altogether for granted. "Montoya was in yesterday," said Roth. "Uh-huh? Said he was comin' over here. He's back in camp. Me and Andy was lookin' for a Chola that wants to sell a hoss." "Mighty poor lot of cayuses round here, Pete.
He greeted the young cowboy in an offhand way, taking the attitude of being so engrossed with cooking that he could not pay great attention to a stray horseman just then. But later in the evening, after they had eaten, the two youths chatted and smoked while Montoya listened and gazed out across the evening mesa. He understood.
"Thought he was a lion. He came a-tearin' up, and I was thinkin' o' lions. So, I jest nacherally loops him. I was praticin'." "First it was the gun. Now it is the rope," said Montoya, smiling. "You make a vaquero, some day, I think." "Oh, mebby. But I sure won't quit you till you get 'em over the range, even if I do git a chanct to ride for some outfit. But I ain't got a job, yet."
A good holster, built on the right lines and one from which a gun came easily, would be very useful to a man of Pete's inclinations. And when it came to the fit and hang of a holster, Montoya knew his business. Three weeks later, almost to a day, the sheep were grazing below the town of Concho, near the camp where Pete had first visited Montoya and elected to work for him.
It is dark, I will walk with you to Concho." "You think I'm a kid?" flared Pete. "If was dark when I come over here and it ain't any darker now. I ain't no doggone cow-puncher what's got to git on a hoss afore he dast go anywhere." Montoya laughed. "You come to-morrow night, eh?" "Reckon I will." "Then the camp will be over there in the cañon. You will see the fire."
As some men play cards, partly for amusement and partly to keep their hands in, so Pete and Montoya played the six-gun game, and neither seemed to tire of the amusement.
The morning sun, pushing up past the cañon-rim, picked out the details of the camp one by one the smouldering fire of cedar wood, the packs, saddles and ropes, the water-cask, the lazy burros waiting for the sun to warm them to action, the blankets and sheepskin bedding, and farther down the cañon a still figure standing on a slight rise of ground and gazing into space the figure of José de la Crux Montoya, the sheep-herder whom Roth had said feared no man and was a dead shot.
He righted the pack-saddles and drove the burros back toward Laguna. Halfway across the mesa he met Pete, who told him what had happened. Montoya said nothing. Pete had hoped that his master would rave and threaten all sorts of vengeance. But the old man simply nodded, and plodding along back of the burros, finally entered Laguna and strode up to the store.
He would not have time to draw but Montoya had taught him the trick of shooting through the open holster . . . Cotton heard Pete's hand strike the butt of his gun as the holster tilted up. Pete fired twice. Staring as though hypnotized, Gary clutched at his shirt over his chest with his free hand.
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