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But Buck was convinced that this was the last thing Lynch intended to do, and gradually there grew up in his mind, fostered by one or two trifling particulars in Tex's manner toward himself, a curious, instinctive feeling of premonitory caution. This increased during the afternoon, when the men were sent out to repair the broken fence, while Lynch remained behind.
He seemed to get the worst of every break. Once, when caught by a friendly current, they were swung under an overhanging branch, but as Hopalong's hand shot up to grasp it a submerged bush caught his feet and pulled him under, and Tex's steel-like arms around his throat almost suffocated him before he managed to beat the other into insensibility and break the hold.
Tree trunks were dancing end over end in it as if they were straws. "Cloud-burst!" he yelled. "Run, Tex! Run for yore life! Cloud-burst up the valley! Run, you fool; Run!" Tex's sarcastic retort was cut short as he instinctively glanced north, and his agonized curse lashed Hopalong forward. "Can't run knee cap's busted! Can't swim, can't do ah, hell !"
Low ridges and sage-topped foothills broke up its continuity, so that the little creek that started so bravely from the mountains ended nowhere, its waters being sucked in by the parched and thirsting alkali soil long before it reached the bad lands. As his horse toiled ankle-deep in the soft whitish mud, Tex's eyes roved over the broadened expanse of the valley.
Dragging the mild-eyed Jersey, which had developed an incredible obstinacy with the cessation of Tex's Comanche yells behind her, Wallie applied the rope he had inherited, with the best imitation he could give of the performance, but futilely.
As he struck out with all his strength down the current, he caught sight of Tex being torn from a jutting tree limb, and he shouted encouragement and swam all the harder, if such a thing were possible. Tex's course was checked for a moment by a boiling back-current and as he again felt the pull of the rushing stream Hopalong's hand gripped his collar and the fight for safety began.
Louderer struck a match and said it was three o'clock. Soon she was asleep. Through a rift in the clouds a star peeped out. I could smell the wet sage and the sand. A little breeze came by, bringing Tex's song once more: "Oh, it matters not, so I've been told, How the body lies when the heart grows cold." Oh, dear! the world seemed so full of sadness.
And she's bin bedridden these twelve year; but she can learn anybody about the Bible; she knows tex's by thousands; there hain't no one can puzzle Jenny over the Bible. 'Is she very ill? asked Betty. 'She's just bedridden with rheumatics, that's all; but 'tis quite enough; and I was calkilatin' only t'other day that I'll have to be diggin' her grave afore Christmas.
The horses plunged, snorting, quickly to the left, the sleigh hit a snow-covered stump, and it was only Tex's expert driving that saved it from overturning. "Some animal. I saw his hide." A hide Rand had seen, but it was the coyote-skin coat of an Indian who had made one sign and instantly vanished. Very quickly the dreaded halt came. "Look out, Tex!
He's shore a game kid an' will make a grand cowboy some day." So this was how Panhandle Smith, at the mature age of five, received the stimulus that set the current of his life in one strong channel. He called himself "Tex." If his mother forgot to use this thrilling name he was offended. He adopted Tex's way of walking, riding, talking.
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