The frivolous buckskin had long since lost all desire for prancing or taking the steep hills in jackrabbit leaps. He stood half asleep in the shade of a rock, with trickles of sweat running down thigh and shoulder; a tamed horse that had learned to conserve his energy and put aside his play. Bud mounted and rode to the pool though it was almost within pistol range.
Side by side he and the buckskin drank their fill before Bud stripped and went into it in a long, clean dive from a rock thrust up into the sunshine and so hot it curled his toes with pain during the few seconds he stood there poised for the jump. The water was cold, the shock to his fevered skin a gorgeous sensation of sheer physical thrill. Bud went deep, tilted and shot to the surface and spouted happily, the cobwebs washed from his brain, the gnawing rancor from his soul. For the moment at least he was his normal, care-free self; hungry, but enjoying to the full this glorious swimming pool set apart from the haunts of men, passed by a dozen times or a hundred, perhaps, without discovery.
And then, swimming and diving, floating and treading water and splashing in pure devilment, he heard some one laugh; a chuckling sort of subdued cackle which Bud knew quite well. By treading water and craning his neck he could see the spot where he had left his clothes, and Butch was there, sitting with his knees drawn up and his ungloved hands clasped around them, smoking and grinning between puffs, with his hat pushed back on his head and the knot of his neckerchief askew under his ear—where he would maybe wear a knot of another kind one day, Bud thought balefully. Butch looked a very good sort of fellow, a pal perhaps who had no whim for a bath that day. But he was not at all like that when he spoke.
"Divin' for it, Bud?" he fleered. "Better claw around there on the bottom, why don't yuh? Gold sinks, yuh know; or don't yuh? I savvy you've had lots of schoolin', but that don't mean you got good sense. What time yuh expect Bob back with the grub? Oughta be showin' up, now, most any time. I heard him say when he left he'd git here b'fore three o'clock. It's way past that now, by the sun." He squinted upward, then spat reflectively toward the pool.
"Of course you'll stay and eat with us," Bud invited urbanely. "Bob promised to bring some fresh eggs and a couple of chickens."
"Yeah, I know he did. I heard 'im." Butch's narrow, light blue eyes were studying Bud's black head, sleek as a wet muskrat, with some curiosity. He had expected a blasphemous series of epithets—and, fifteen minutes sooner, he probably would have heard them. He had not reckoned upon the steadying effect of that cold plunge.
"Then of course you'll stay." (Privately, Bud was certain that Butch was not to be shaken off before he had accomplished his purpose; and, frankly, Bud believed that murder was his purpose.)
"Might, seein' you insist. I'm purty well hooked up with grub, but my kew-seen don't include chicken. How yuh goin' to cook it, Bud?"
"Broil mine—and rub it with butter, salt and pepper now and then. How you want yours?"
"Sounds good t' me. I'll take the same."