“I don’t know what Mr. Hicks would say. But the cattle are in hand again—and there’s less than a hundred here for the bunch to drive back. They can get along without me, I reckon.”
“And surely without me!” laughed Ruth.
And so it was arranged. The Indian and Ruth were off up the valley betimes the next morning, while the rest of the party started for the river, driving the last of the stray beeves ahead of them.
CHAPTER XVIII—A DESPERATE CASE
Jane Ann and Tom Cameron had both offered to accompany Ruth; but for a very good—if secret—reason Ruth did not wish any of her young friends to attend her at the meeting which she hoped would occur between her and the strange young man who (if report were true) had been hanging about the Tintacker properties for so long.
She had written Uncle Jabez after her examination with the lawyer of the mining record books at Bullhide; but she had told her uncle only that the claims had been transferred to the name of “John Cox.” That was the name, she knew, that the vacuum cleaner agent had given Uncle Jabez when he had interested the miller in the mine. But there was another matter in connection with the name of “Cox” which Ruth feared would at once become public property if any of her young friends were present at the interview to which she now so eagerly looked forward.
Freckles, now as fresh as a pony could be, carried Ruth rapidly up the valley, and as the two ponies galloped side by side the girl from the Red Mill grew quite confidential with the Indian. She did not like Jib Pottoway as she did the foreman of the Bar Cross Naught ranch; but the Indian was intelligent and companionable, and he quite evidently put himself out to be entertaining.
As he rode, dressed in his typical cowboy costume, Jib looked the full-blooded savage he was; but his conversation smacked of the East and of his experiences at school. What he said showed that Uncle Sam does very well by his red wards at Carlisle.
Jib could tell her, too, much that was interesting regarding the country through which they rode. It was wild enough, and there was no human habitation in sight. Occasionally a jackrabbit crossed their trail, or a flock of birds flew whirring from the path before them. Of other life there was none until they had crossed the first ridge and struck into a beaten path which Jib declared was the old pack-trail to Tintacker.
The life they then saw did not encourage Ruth to believe that this was either a safe or an inhabited country. Freckles suddenly shied as they approached a bowlder which was thrust out of the hillside beside the trail. Ruth was almost unseated, for she had been riding carelessly. And when she raised her eyes and saw the object that had startled the pony, she was instantly frightened herself.