“When you holler hello in this cañon, smile!” he paraphrased whimsically, and drew his shirt sleeve across his forehead. “Thought I’d landed that trick Voice at last. Well, darn it, how are you?”
“All right,” Monty grinned slowly, “if you just put down that hay fork. What’s the matter? You gittin’ like Waddell?”
Gary leaned the pitchfork against the cabin. He pushed his hair back from his forehead with a gesture familiar to audiences the country over.
“By heck, I hope not,” he exclaimed brusquely. “I’d given up looking for you, Monty. And that cussed Voice sounded to me like it had slipped. I’ve got used to it up on the hill, but I sure as heck will take a fall out of it if it comes hollering around my humble hang-out. Where’s the Ford?”
Monty pulled saddle and blanket together from the back of the sorrel, leaving the wet imprint shining in the sun. The sorrel twitched its hide as the air struck through the moisture coldly.
“Well, now, the old Ford’s done been cremated ever since the night I left here,” Monty informed him pensively. “Yuh-all recollect we had quite a wind from the west that night. Anyway, it blowed hard over to my camp. I started a fire and never thought a word about the Ford being on the lee side of camp, so first I knew the whole top of the car was afire. I just had time to give her a start down the hill away from camp before the gas tank blowed up. So that left me afoot, except for a saddle horse or two. Then I had some ridin’ to do off over the other way. And I knew yuh had grub enough to last a month or two, so I didn’t hurry right over like I would have done if yuh-all needed anything.” His keen eyes dwelt upon Gary’s face with unobtrusive attention.
The young movie star, he thought, had changed noticeably. He was a shade browner, a shade thinner, more than a shade less immaculate. Monty observed that he was wearing a pair of Waddell’s old trousers, tucked into a pair of Waddell’s high-laced boots with the heels worn down to half their height, the result of climbing over rocks. Gary’s shirt was open with a deep V turned in at the collar, disclosing a neck which certain sentimental extra girls at the studio had likened to that of a Greek god. Gary’s sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. He looked, in short, exactly as any upstanding city chap looks when he is having the time of his life in the country, wearing old clothes—the older, the better suited to his mood—and roughing it exuberantly.
Yet there was a difference. Exuberant young fellows from the city seldom have just that look in the eyes, or those lines at the corners of the mouth. Monty unconsciously adopted a faintly solicitous tone.
“How yuh-all been making it, anyway?” he asked, watching Gary roll a cigarette.
“Finest ever!” Gary declared cheerfully, lighting a match with his thumb nail, a trick he had learned from an old range man because it lent an effective touch sometimes to his acting.