"I'll borry three thousand, and get it all in gold," Lark planned. "I'll take a valise along, and carry the weight easy enough without it being noticed. I'll likely stay over a day in Glasgow, anyway."
"Make it as quick a trip as you can, Lark. You must bear in mind that Kid expects us to-night, and I wouldn't want the deal to fall through because he got tired of waiting. He's touchy as the devil—and if I don't get those two black bronchs, I'll die!"
[CHAPTER EIGHT]
BUD HOLDS COUNCIL WITH HIMSELF
When he sauntered down from the Council Rock in the full flood of moonlight, left Lark to enter the house alone and continued to the bunk house, where the boys still lingered by the doorway, Bud did not look like a man whose life depends upon getting a pair of black bronchos into his possession. His walk and his softly whistled tune betokened care-free youth.
Cigarettes pricked little, red stars in the line of shadow before the long, low-roofed building where the riders of the Meadowlark were housed and fed to their complete content. The murmur of voices dwindled so that the frog chorus came sharp to the ears as Bud came up and squatted on his boot-heels alongside a man whom he identified even in the shadow as his particular friend, Frank Gelle—called Jelly with a frank disregard for proper pronunciation.
"Have a good trip, Bud?" Not for a top horse would Gelle have betrayed his curiosity over the mysterious visitors.
"Pretty fair. Hot as blazes riding across the reservation yesterday. Oh, by the way, Rosy, I didn't get those socks you wanted if I rode back through town. I meant to, but when the bank was robbed—"
"Get out!" Gelle exclaimed, as an expression of surprise. "Some of these days, Bud, somebody's goin' to lose his patience all of a sudden. He'll just kill you and drag you off somewhere and leave you. I hate to do it, but you won't be human till somebody asks the question, so who's the girl you brought in?"