“Uh-huh. So’s them stars numbered, all right. I dunno, me. Tom Lorrigan’s damn smart man.” He reached down for an old bridle and grinned again. “Scotty, I guess he don’ say how many numbers them days is, you bet.” He started off, trailing his bridle reins carelessly in the dust.
“If you’re going to catch up a horse, Sam, I wish you’d haze in the best one on the ranch for me.”
Sam Pretty Cow paused, half turned, spat meditatively into the dust and jerked a thumb toward the stable.
“Me, I dunno. Bes’ horse on the ranch is in them box stall. Them’s Coaley. I guess you don’ want Coaley, huh?”
Lance bit his lip, looking at Sam Pretty Cow intently.
“You needn’t catch up a horse for me, Sam. 263 I’ll ride Coaley,” he said smoothly. Which brought a surprised grunt from Sam Pretty Cow, Indian though he was, accustomed though he was to the ways of the Lorrigans.
But it was not his affair if Lance and his father quarreled when Tom returned. Indeed, Tom might not return very soon, in which case he would not hear anything about Lance’s audacity unless Lance himself told it. Sam Pretty Cow would never mention it, and Shorty would not say a word. Shorty never did say anything if he could by any means keep silence.
Lance returned to the house, taking long strides that, without seeming hurried, yet suggested haste. He presently came down the path again, this time with a blanket roll and a sack with lumpy things tied in the bottom. He wore chaps, his spurs, carried a yellow slicker over his arm. On his head was a black Stetson, one of Tom’s discarded old hats.
He led Coaley from the box stall where he had never before seen him stand, saddled him, tied his bundles compactly behind the cantle, mounted and rode down the trail, following the hoof prints that showed freshest in the loose, gravelly sand. Coaley, plainly glad to be out of his prison, stepped daintily along in a rocking half trot that would carry him more miles in a day than any other horse in the country could cover, and bring him to the journey’s end with springy gait and head held 264 proudly, ears twitching, ready for more miles if his rider wanted more.
The tracks led up the road to the Ridge, turned sharply off where the brush grew scanty among the flat rocks that just showed their faces above the surface of the arid soil. Lance frowned and followed. For a long way he skirted the rim rock that edged the sheer bluff. A scant furlong away, on his right, a trail ran west to the broken land of Indian Creek. But since the horsemen had chosen to keep to the rocky ground along the rim, Lance followed.