Striking out into the water regardless of his sweater and heavy corduroy trousers, he paddled after it. By this time the entire flock was out of sight, and when Jack emerged from the river dripping like a water-dog, the man remarked, coolly: "Well, your hunt's up for this day, Buddy. Better skip home and hang yourself up to dry, or you'll be having pneumonia. Aren't you one of the kids that lives at that place where they've got Ware's Wigwam painted on the post, and all sorts of outlandish figgers on the tents?"
"Yes," acknowledged Jack, in a surly tone, resenting the name kid. Then, remembering the fate that the man's warning had saved him from, he added, gratefully: "It was lucky for me you yelled out quicksand just when you did, for I was so bent on getting that duck that I'd have kept on trying, no matter how the pony cut up. I thought he had taken a stubborn spell, and wanted to balk at the water. I'm a thousand times obliged. Here, Lloyd," he added. "Here's your trophy. We'll hang it on your saddle."
He held out the fowl, a beautifully marked drake, but she drew back with a little shrug of the shoulders.
"Oh, mercy, no!" she answered. "I wouldn't touch it for the world!"
"Haw! Haw!" roared the White Bachelor, who had watched her shrinking gesture with a grin. "Afraid of a dead duck!"
"I'm not!" she declared, turning on him, indignantly. "I'm not afraid of anything! But I just can't beah to touch dead things, especially with fu'h or feathahs on them. Ugh! It neahly makes me sick to think about it!"
"Well, if that don't beat the Dutch," said the man, in an amused tone, after a long stare. She seemed to be a strange species of womankind, with which he was unacquainted. Then, after another prolonged stare, he swung his heels against the sides of his old white horse as a signal to move, and ambled slowly off, talking to himself as he went.
"Meddlesome old thing!" muttered Lloyd, casting an indignant glance after him. "It's none of his business. I don't see what he wanted to poke in for."
"It was lucky for me that he did," answered Jack. "I never once thought of quicksand. Queer that I didn't, too, when I've heard so much about it ever since I came. It's all through Southern Arizona, and more than one man has lost his life blundering into it."
Lloyd grew serious as she realized the danger he had escaped. "It was mighty brave of you to go back into the rivah aftah you came so neah being drowned, and just fo' my pleasuah—just because you knew I wanted that duck. I'll remembah it always of you, Jack."