“Stowin’ some fodder,” Bill replied. “Sam’s gone back to bed.”
He stared into the flames, brooding, abstracted, frowning.
Bud Cole yawned.
“I’m goin’ to turn in,” he said, and departed to his bed.
Mather volunteered no information. A cow-puncher’s respect for other people’s private concerns does not lessen his natural curiosity. Charlie contemplated his toes. He was young—one of the youngest range bosses in Montana. Life, for Charlie, had embraced a number of stirring episodes, and he had not been unconscious of the drama. He had uncanny perception, a reflective, imaginative quality, allied to a capacity for action. He looked up at young Bill and he knew the boy was troubled, out of all proportion to the fact of his father having got astray in a snowstorm.
“He can roll in with you when he’s fed an’ warmed, Bill,” he said.
Mather nodded. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then turned without a word back to the cook tent. He was there quite a time. When he came back he brought his father with him. Bill overtopped him by a head. The tangled beard and unkempt hair made the old fellow a wild-looking figure. Bill stowed him in his own bed. Then he came back to the fire, to Charlie Shaw, and sat humped on his boot heels, with a face like a mask.
“Like a frozen man,” Charlie thought. “’Tain’t natural for a kid like him. Make a good gambler with that poker face. Never tell what went on behind it.”
“Somethin’s happened,” Bill broke the silence abruptly, speaking in an undertone. “He won’t tell me. I got to go see for myself.”
“Where? When?” Charlie could be concise, himself.