Montell nodded. “There’s no call to change,” he said, and again the purring, satisfied note crept into his voice.
“I want another good horse, a saddle, a pack layout, and grub for a month,” Barreau enumerated. “Rout Steve up—you know where he sleeps—and have him get those things. We need guns, too. Where is my box?”
“It’s on the tail end of the first wagon outside. Steve’s sleepin’ just beyond. Couldn’t you just as well wake him, George?”
“No, I’ve other things to do,” Barreau refused bluntly. “Bestir your fat carcass, and set him to work. The night air won’t hurt you. We have no time to waste. For all I know a troop of Police may be on us before we can get started again.”
Montell grunted some unintelligible protest, but nevertheless, heaved his flesh-burdened body up from the cot. He gathered about him a much-worn dressing gown, and, thrusting his feet into a pair of slippers, left the tent.
“Now, let us see about clothes,” Barreau said to me, and I followed him to the wagon-end.
He climbed up on the hind wheel. After a second or two of fumbling he upended a flat steamer trunk. I held it while he leaped to the ground, and between us we carried it into the tent.
“The Police have my key—much good may it do them,” he remarked, and pried open the lid with a hatchet that lay near by. He threw a few articles carelessly aside.
“Peel off those roustabout garments,” he said to me. “Here is something better. Lucky we’re about of a size.”
He gave me a blue flannel shirt to begin with, and when I had discarded the soiled rags I wore and put on the clean one, he held out to me a coat and trousers of some dark cloth, a pair of riding boots similar to those on his own feet, and clean socks. Other clothing he hauled from the trunk and laid in a pile by itself. Lastly he brought forth a new felt hat.