Lark eyed the speaker across the saddle he was uncinching.
"In the wrong corral, Bud. Havin' the heart kicked outa him—game little cuss. Fit to wear our brand. Better take him up to the house and feed him and put him to bed. Been in the saddle since nine o'clock last night, Bud."
Bud lounged over to them—a slim, handsome youth with the peculiar, stilted walk of the cowboy—and bent smiling over the child, gathering the little body up in his arms.
"Shall I bed him with that broken-legged cougar, or nest him with the young eagle, or down in the calf corral, or where?" he bantered. "The Meddalark's about full up with orphan babies right now. How do you grade this one?"
"Ask maw. Bet she'll know his stall quick enough." He pulled off the saddle and, with a glance up at the approaching storm, walked to a near-by shed with the heavy, stamped saddle skirts flapping against his legs.
A sudden, blinding glare and rending crash of thunder sent the young fellow scurrying up the path to the one-story ranch house that sprawled against the hill as if it had backed there for shelter and still huddled in fear. Great drops of rain like cold molten bullets spatted into the dust. The young man laughed as he ran, the boy clinging to his neck with two thin arms. They reached the sagging porch just as another flash ripped through the clouds and let loose the full torrent of rain.
Turning to look back, he saw Lark almost at his heels, his broad hat brim flooded with the down-pour. The two halted on the porch and stood gazing out at the slanted wall of water, the thunder of it on the porch roof like the deep pounding of surf beating against rocks. Lark stared up at the high plateau beyond the Basin's rim, and his whimsical mouth widened in a satisfied smile.
"This'll wash out every track in the country," he yelled above the uproar. "Needn't have circled through the foothills if I'd known it was comin'."
Bud looked at him, glanced down at the boy now lying in the slackness of deep sleep on his shoulder. He shook his head in vague disapproval.
"Stole him, hunh?"