He sat now in the burning sunshine on earth so parched that it was hot to the bare hand, looking over the J7 day herd—thinking. The herd had watered, and taken to its noonday siesta. Two riders lolled in their saddles on watch, striving to keep awake in that hot noon silence.
The “reps” who had worked with Robin’s crew all spring had cut their horses and cattle and gone home. In that herd under his eye only a few Block S cattle showed, a few strays of other northern brands. The bulk of those grazing or resting cattle bore the T Bar S and the bulk of those T Bar S’s were yearlings and two-year-olds—the ripe harvest of two seasons’ industrious stealing. There was not among them, Robin surmised, thirty head of the original T Bar S cattle which had been turned loose south of the Bear Paws. Decidedly Jim Bond’s herd had shown a miraculous increase.
Robin looked them over and smiled—smiled and went on thinking. For two months he had played a lone hand. Sutherland had given him the briefest outline of work to be performed and left him alone. Robin had done his work. He knew he had done it well. And in addition to legitimate range work the gathering of this T Bar S stuff had exceeded his expectations. He grinned when he thought of what his spring gathering might mean to Shining Mark.
Off in the north the Bear Paws loomed blue out of the heat haze that shimmered on the plains. Robin gazed longingly at those distant mountains. He was hungry for a sight of May. He wanted to talk with Adam Sutherland. He had a crew of lusty, eager youths who had served him faithfully and he wanted them to celebrate the Fourth. He had a fancy for riding into Big Sandy with those fourteen sunburned riders at his back.
The fruit of his reflection ripened speedily to action. He rode into camp, bade the horse wrangler bunch the remuda and catch him a certain horse. He drew aside Tom Hayes, the hawk-faced rider who had proved himself a capable second in command.
“I’m going for a little pasear by myself,” he said. “You move up to the Judith in the cool of evenin’. To-morrow shove on to the mouth of Eagle Creek. If we can cross this stuff there maybe we’ll ride into Big Sandy for the Fourth. I’ll be back sometime to-morrow. If I don’t,” he added as an afterthought, “you hold camp opposite Eagle Creek till I do come.”
An hour later Robin was breasting the Missouri river. He had picked a good water horse. He went in naked, holding his clothes in a dry bundle above his head while his mount traversed that half-mile breadth of swimming water.
He loped past the empty line camp where he had left Mark Steele sprawled on the dirt floor that cold December afternoon. It was hot in that sage-floored canyon. Robin took to the benchland, where cooler airs blew.
In all the broad sweep of Chase Hill and upper Birch he saw no sign of the Block S round-up. With the Bar M Bar two miles on his right he bore up into the Bear Paws and rode a sweat-lathered horse into the Sutherland ranch at sundown. A stable hand told him Sutherland was at home. Robin stalked over to the house. When his spurs clinked on the first front step a yellow head raised out of a hammock and May came with outstretched hands and shining eyes to meet him.
“It’s been a long spring,” she whispered. “I’m a patient creature, Robin, but the time has seemed so long, so long!”