It was that tenacious element which started Irish, Cal Emmett, Jack Bates, and Big Medicine to tilting hat brims together when none others were near observe them. It was that which sent them off riding by themselves—to town, they said before they started—early on the first Sunday after the wagons had pulled in to the ranch, there to stand until the beef round-up started.
They returned unobtrusively by mid-afternoon, and they looked very well satisfied with themselves, and inclined to facetiousness.
“What’s the matter?” Weary asked them pointedly when they dismounted at the corral. “Come back after something you forgot?”
“Yeah—sure,” Cal returned, with a flicker of eyelids. “Nothing doing in that darned imitation of a town, anyway.”
“Where’s the mail?” Pink demanded expectantly.
“We—plumb forgot that there mail, by cripes!” Big Medicine looked up quickly. “Irish was goin’ to git it, but he didn’t.”
Pink said nothing, but he studied the four from under the long, curled lashed which he had found very useful in concealing covert glances.
“Sorry, Little One—honest to grandma, I am!” Big Medicine clapped him patronizingly on the shoulder as he passed him.
“I don’t know as it matters,” said Pink sweetly. “Some of us were just about ready to hit the trail. We can get it, I guess. Say! Ain’t you got that cayuse caught up yet, Mig?” he called out to the Native Son, who was reclining luxuriously against a new stack of sweet-smelling bluejoint hay. “Come out of your trance, or we’ll go off and leave you!”
“Oh—yuh going to town?” Cal looked over his shoulder with some uneasiness in his baby-blue eyes.