“A couple of Piutes happened along the other day, and I had them run in the horses for me. Thought I’d keep up a saddle horse so I could round up a team of work horses when I get ready to haul the hay.” He blew a mouthful of smoke and gave a short laugh. “I’m a heck of a stock hand for a gink that was born on a horse ranch.” He blew another mouthful of smoke deliberately, not at all conscious that he was making what is termed a dramatic pause, nor that he was making it with good effect. “I owe Pat Connolly,” he said slowly, “a cheap saddle horse. I’m glad Pat hadn’t learned to love that scrawny bay. Where can I get a horse for about a dollar and six bits?”
Monty eyed him dubiously. “Yuh-all mean yuh lost a hawse?”
“No-o, I didn’t exactly lose a horse. It died.” Gary sat down in the doorway and folded his arms upon his knees.
“I ought to have had more sense,” he sighed, “than to stake him out so close to the shed where the sack of grain was. I sort of knew that rolled barley is not good as an exclusive diet for horses. I had a heck of a job,” he added complainingly, “digging a hole big enough to plant him in.”
Monty swore sympathetically; and after the manner of men the world over, related sundry misfortunes of his own by way of giving comfort. Gary listened, made profane ejaculations in the proper places, and otherwise deported himself agreeably. But when Monty ceased speaking while he attended to the serious business of searching his most inaccessible pockets for a match, Gary broached a subject altogether foreign to Monty’s plaintive reminiscences.
“Say, Monty! Was Waddell tall and kind of stoop-shouldered and bald under his hat? And did he have blue eyes and a kind of sandy complexion and lips rather thin—but pleasant, you know; and did he always wear an old gray Stetson and khaki pants tucked into boots like these?”
Monty found the match, in his shirt pocket after all. A shadow flicked across his face. Perhaps even Monty Girard had an instinct for dramatic pauses and hated to see one fall flat.
“Naw. Waddell wasn’t a very tall man and he was dark complected; the sallow kind of dark. His eyes was dark, too.” He examined the match rather carefully, as if he were in some doubt as to its proper use. He decided to light it and lifted a foot deliberately, so that he might draw the match sharply across the sole.
“That description of yours,” he said, flipping the match stub away from him and watching to see just where it landed, “tallies up with Steve Carson. Yuh ain’t——” He turned his head and regarded curiously the Gary Marshall profile, which at that moment was absolutely impassive. “It was Steve cut the logs and built this cabin,” he finished lamely.
Gary unfolded his arms and stretched his legs out straight before him. “What happened to this Steve Carson?” he asked innocently. “Did he sell out to Waddell?”