Gary got up and stretched his arms above his head. “She wanted me to sit in my cabin and listen to a saddle horse champing hay,” he contended lightly. “I think I’ll go down and give Jazz a feed of barley to champ.”
Monty understood quite well that Gary meant to end the discussion right there. He said no more about it, therefore. But he promised himself—and mentally he promised Patricia as well—that he would manage somehow to bring about a complete understanding between these two obstinate young people.
They slept shoulder to shoulder that night in Monty’s bunk, and the next morning they saddled early and each rode his way, feeling the better for the meeting.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“THAT CAT AIN’T HUMAN!”
Monty rode rather anxiously into Johnnywater Cañon, determined to take whatever means he found necessary to persuade Gary to return to Los Angeles and “make it up with his girl.” With three weeks’ wages in his pocket Monty felt sufficiently affluent to buy the pigs and chickens if Gary used them for a point in his argument against going.
Monty had spent a lot of time during those three weeks in mulling over in his mind the peculiar chain of circumstances that had dragged Gary to Johnnywater. What bond it was that held him there, Monty would have given much to know. He was sure that Gary disliked the place, and that he hated to stay there alone. It seemed unreasonable that any normal young man would punish himself like that from sheer stubbornness; yet Gary would have had Monty believe that he was staying to spite Patricia.
Monty did not believe it. Gary had shown himself to be too intelligent, too level-headed and safely humorous in his viewpoints to harbor that peculiar form of egotism. Monty was shrewd enough to recognize the fact that “cutting off the nose to spite the face” is a sport indulged in only by weak natures who own an exaggerated ego. Wherefore, Gary failed to convince him that he was of that type of individual.
At the same time, he could think of no other reason that could possibly hold a man like Gary Marshall at Johnnywater. Monty had a good memory for details. Certain trivial incidents he remembered vividly: Gary’s stealthy approach around the corner of the cabin with the upraised pitchfork in his hands; Gary’s forced gayety afterwards, and the strained look in his eyes—the lines beside the mouth; Gary’s reluctance to speak of the uncanny, nameless something that clung to Johnnywater Cañon; the incomprehensible behavior of the spotted cat. And always Monty brought up short with a question which he asked himself but could not answer.
Why had Gary Marshall described Steven Carson—who had dropped from sight of mortal eyes five years and more ago?—why had Gary described Steve Carson and asked if that description fitted Waddell?
“Gary never saw Steve Carson—not when he was alive, anyway. He says the Indians never told him how Steve looked. I reckon he really thought Waddell was that kind uh lookin’ man. But how in thunder did he get the idea?” Monty frequently found himself mentally asking that question, but he never attempted to put an answer into words. He couldn’t. He didn’t know the answer.