“Somebody’s foggin’ it on our track,” Tommy Thatcher remarked.
The “somebody” turned out to be Adam Sutherland, in a fancy buggy, holding taut reins over a pair of standard-bred bays kicking the dust out from under them as if they were hitched to a racing sulky.
The buggy passed like a rider at the gallop. Sutherland nodded. The cowboys lifted their hats when they saw a girl in the seat beside Sutherland. The shiny top was up and all they had was a glimpse. But that was sufficient, for some of them.
“May’s back, eh?” one commented.
Robin had a flash of a pale face, fair hair, bright blue eyes. He knew about Sutherland’s only daughter although he had never seen her until now. She was getting a formal education in the State capital, where Sutherland lived in the winter, and sometimes she came to the home ranch a few weeks in summer. She had been born on Little Eagle when the Block S cattle numbered hundreds instead of thousands. She was good-looking, the cowboys said, and she had been very pleasant to crippled riders laid up at the home ranch, but none of them knew her well. She rode about in the hills a little with her father, and a great deal more alone. The Sutherland riders discussed her freely as the buggy grew small on the trail ahead and disappeared at last over a rise.
“She used to love a good rider,” Amby Phillips said reflectively. “So you bronco fighters can have hope. One time she was half-stuck on a kid that broke horses on Little Eagle—about four years ago, if I remember right. I seen her sit on the fence and clap her hands when he topped off a colt that jumped high, wide an’ handsome. She used to run around with him a lot. An’ one day a bronc went over backward on this kid an’ killed him. She went all to pieces over it, they say. She ain’t been here much since. You know her, Mark?”
Steele nodded. “Met her two or three times,” he drawled. “I was over to the house last night. Nice lookin’, all right. Kinda acts as if she was proud as hell about something, though.”
Old Tex Matthews snickered audibly and Steele flashed a cold glance at him.
“What you say, Tex?” he inquired with exaggerated politeness.
“I didn’t say. But I was thinkin’ that if it don’t rain soon and soften up this ground I’ll have to shoe a couple of horses.”