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Updated: June 28, 2025
"Thank Gawd fer thet," breathed Blinky. They found the campfire deserted except for Gus and Pan's father. Evidently Pan's advent interrupted a story that had been most exciting to Gus. "Son, I I was just tellin' Gus all I know about what come off yesterday," explained Smith, frankly, though with some haste. "But there are some points I'd sure like cleared up for myself."
Gus stepped forward without any show of the excitement that characterized the others. "If you need evidence other than our word, it's easy to find," he said. "Mac New's gun was not the same caliber as Pan's. An' as the bullet thet killed Hardman is still in his body it can be found." "Gentlemen, that isn't necessary," replied Wiggate, hastily, with a shudder. "Not for me.
I wish it war them. But it arn't likely: they had a good boat an' a compass in it; and if they've made any use o' their oars, they ought to be far from here long afore this. You've got the best ears, nigger: keep them well set, an' listen. You know the voices o' the ole Pan's crew. See if you can make 'em out."
Then Blinky ran in with a gun in each hand, and his wild aspect most powerfully supplemented Pan's furious energy and menace. "Fork them hosses, you !" yelled Blinky. Death for more of them quivered in the balance. As one man, Hardman's riders rushed with thudding boots and tinkling spurs to mount their horses.
This laugh, loud but not jolly as it was intended to appear, routed Clemenceau's solemn thoughts. It seemed, like Pan's, from a statue, which gleamed in a vista, still to reverberate when the inventor went back to the house.
The one whose back was turned to Pan did not see him, but the other man jerked up from his bench, then sagged back with strangely altering expression. He was young, dark, coarse, and he had a bullet hole in his chin. Pan's recognition did not lag behind the other's. This was Handy Mac New, late of Montana, a cowboy who had drifted beyond the pale.
Some of these men, like Pan's father, had to work part of the time away from home, to earn much-needed money. Jim Blake, the latest of these incoming settlers, had chosen a site down in a deep swale that Pan always crossed when he went to visit his uncle.
These genial fiery young men, lithe and tall and round limbed, breathing the life and spirit of the range, crowded round Pan, proving that there never was a cowboy who did not like youngsters. "Say kid, I'll swap saddles with you," spoke up the one who had first addressed him. Pan's heart was palpitating. How could they know how beautiful and wonderful they looked to him?
Pan's eyes dimmed, and for a moment he was not quite sure of himself. Later he mingled again with the men round the campfire. Some of the restraint had disappeared, at least in regard to Wiggate and his men toward everybody except Pan. That nettled him and at an opportune moment he confronted the horse buyer. "How'd you learn about this drive of ours?" he asked, briefly.
The golden-walled mesas stood up, black fringed against the blue. In the bold notches burned the red of autumn foliage. Valleys spread between the tablelands. There was room for a hundred homesteads. Pan's keen eye sighted only a few and they were farther on, green squares in the gray. Down toward Siccane cattle made tiny specks on the vast expanse.
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