Gus Tanburt looked over her ridgy shoulder and squinted at her horse. For a few moments Mary scarcely breathed. But the watery eyes coasted back to her again, and she knew that the rancher had not recognized the animal as belonging to Diamond H.
“I got nothin’ fitten to eat,” he told her. “I’m a sick man, an’ I’m alone and don’t wanta be pestered. Ye c’n put th’ brute in th’ corral and pitch ’im a couple forkfuls o’ hay, if ye want to. That’ll be fifty cents. Then if ye c’n find anything to eat in th’ kitchen ye’re welcome to he’p yerself. That’ll be a dollar. Waterin’ th’ brute is fifty cents, a’g’in. Two dollars in all. Strike ye right?”
“Oh, yes,” muttered Mary. “Quite reasonable—especially the water, which is going to waste a barrelful every five minutes.”
“Well, this here’s a desert country, ma’am, an’ us folks that put up with stayin’ ’way out here gotta make a livin’. Ye c’n take it or leave it. Funny, though, a woman like you all alone forkin’ a hoss from Glennin’ to Britton. If it’s any o’ my business—”
“It isn’t,” Mary broke in. “Where shall I put my horse?”
He shuffled out and to the corner of the house, where he pointed a crooked finger toward one of the large stables, about which was a tumble-down board corral.
“Put ’im in that corral,” he said. “That’s th’ hoss corral. Keep away from t’other’n, though. It runs ’way back in th’ cottonwoods, to where ye can’t see, an’ I got a bad bull in there. He killed a cholo last summer.”
“All right,” said Mary. “I’ll not go near him.”
She went to her horse, and, afraid to mount because she would display her awkwardness and probably be forced to explain about the broken rib, led the animal past the rancher toward the corral he had indicated. He stood at the corner of the house and watched her until she had taken down the bars and turned in the horse; but Mary had detected no suspicion in his eyes as they roved appraisingly over the animal, as a horseman’s eyes invariably will do. She had walked abreast the horse’s shoulder to hide the Diamond H brand. He watched her while she took off the saddle and bridle. But he had disappeared before she came from the stable with the second allotted forkful of fragrant alfalfa hay.
Mary carried this forkful to the corner of the stable farthest from the ranch house, as she had the first. Casting a quick glance over her shoulder, she stepped past the head of her eagerly eating horse and was hidden from the house by the stable. She whipped off her hat and waved furiously to Shirttail Henry, hidden somewhere in that part of the cottonwood grove inhabited by the man-killer bull. This bull, Mary believed, was a myth; for she and Henry had approached the ranch buildings so that this neck of the grove would screen them from the inhabitants. Henry had slunk through the grove on reaching it, and she had ridden by to come out on the road that passed through the ranch. She had seen Henry’s broad, bewhiskered face peering out at her from a portion of the grove not far from the stables where she had later found hay for her horse. This meant that Henry had walked the length of the grove parallel with her course along the road, and he had not looked as if he had seen anything of the alleged destroyer.