It was beginning to snow—great soft clinging flakes, and each like a wet cold pinch of wool! The snow storm was both good and bad; it made it difficult to handle the ponies, but it subtracted from the chances of Bear Shield’s successful pursuit.
Mr. Masterson and Cimarron Bill, one on the right and one on the left flank of the herd, riding to and fro like setter dogs quartering for birds, drove on throughout a hard four hours. They broke eastward to avoid Sun City; for it would have been impolite to bring those ponies through hamlet or ranch, and so threaten it with Bear Shield’s anger.
With the first of dawn the tired riders, having brought the bunch into a stretch of country choice for that purpose, halted to make an inspection. The snow had ceased to fall, and the sun coming up gave them light enough to tell good from evil as presented in the shape of ponies. While Mr. Masterson held the herd, Cimarron Bill commenced cutting out the spent and worthless ones. When the weeding was over, there remained one hundred and thirty head, and the worst among them worth thirty dollars in the Dodge corrals. Throwing the riff-raff loose, Mr. Masterson and Cimarron Bill again took up their travels at a stiff road gait. They were forty-five miles from Dodge; worn as they were, they should still reach the Arkansas and Dodge by nightfall.
“And now,” quoth Mr. Masterson, when they were straightened away for the north, “what have you been doing? Aunt Nettie was scared speechless. She thought the Cheyennes had run their brand on you.”
Cimarron Bill’s adventures were laid open. Ten miles out from Sun City he had crossed up with Red River Tom of the Bar-8-bar ranch. That well-informed boy had told him of a dance to be given three nights away, in the new camp-house of the B-in-a-Box outfit. “No common fandango,” explained Cimarron Bill, “but the real thing, with people comin’ from as far away as Tascosa an’ Fort Sill. Nacherrally, I decided to attend. That Cheyenne I was after, an’ his pony, could wait; the dance couldn’t.”
Cimarron Bill, continuing, told how he had cut across country for the home ranch of the B-in-a-Box. He arrived in good time, that is to say four hours prior to the fiddlers, which, as he expressed it, gave him space wherein “to liquor up” and get in proper key for the festival impending. While engaged upon these preliminaries he was shot in the leg by a fellow-guest with whom he disagreed.
“You see,” explained Cimarron Bill, “this outlaw was a Texas ranger, an’ after about six drinks I started to tell him what I thought of a prairie dog who would play policeman that a-way, for thirty dollars a month an’ furnish his own hoss. One word leads to another an’ the last one to the guns, an’ the next news is I get plugged in the off hind laig. I wouldn’t have cared so much,” concluded Cimarron Bill, in mournful meditation over his mishap, “only he shot me before the first dance.”
Cimarron Bill had been laid up in the new camp-house of the hospitable B-in-a-Box. Being able to mount and ride away, three days before Mr. Masterson encountered him, he had deemed it expedient to make a driving raid on Bear Shield’s village on his journey home, and carry off a handful of ponies. Thus, by a coincidence of pony-raiding impulse, the two had been restored to one another.
“For you see,” said Cimarron Bill, “I was still shy a hoss, the same as when I started out of Dodge.”
“All the same,” observed Mr. Masterson, severely, “you ought to have sent word to Aunt Nettie.”