“I’m all ready now, I think,” said I.
“Wait a minute,” Wall laughed. “Don’t rush off. Bax wouldn’t come into the Circle camp after yuh to-night for two farms in Iowa. Chances are he’s busy right now figuring a way to get a dead safe whack at Matt Dunn. Come on over to the cook-tent and get some grub to tie on your saddle. You’ll need it.”
By the light of a candle he ransacked the grub boxes on the tail end of the cook-wagon. A loaf of bread, some fresh-made biscuits, and a big piece of boiled beef, together with a trifle of pepper and salt this light-hearted, capable youngster wrapped in a bit of burlap and tied behind the cantle of my saddle. And while he munched a piece of beef himself, he gave me explicit directions as to my course.
“Once yuh get over into the MacLeod country,” he concluded, “you’ll be all right. Nobody’ll care a cuss who yuh are nor where yuh come from, so long as yuh behave yourself. This red hoss hasn’t got the Circle brand, though he belongs to the outfit, so they won’t ask no fool questions about him. Yuh ought to pick up a job with some uh them Canadian layouts pretty easy.”
“Oh, wait a minute,” he exclaimed, when I was again about to mount, and he ran over to an outspread canvas-covered bed. He fumbled among the tumbled quilts a moment and came back to me carrying a broad cartridge-belt, on which a bone-handled Colt swung in its leathern scabbard.
“I pretty near forgot this,” he chuckled. “Yuh ain’t heeled, and Lord knows yuh need to be at this stage uh the game. Say, how are yuh off for coin?”
“Man alive!” I cried—and I meant it, “you’ve done more for me now than I can repay in a thousand years. I don’t need money.”
“Oh, yes, yuh do,” he returned, unruffled. “A dollar or two’ll come mighty handy when yuh hit MacLeod, or wherever yuh land. I ain’t goin’ to make yuh rich. Here, and good luck to yuh.”
He pressed a ten-dollar gold piece upon me. Then we shook hands as brothers at parting, and I rode out of the Circle camp on a high-stepping horse, with the Big Dipper and the North Star to guide me to the Canada line.