“All right,” pleasantly responded Shields, vigorously attacking the thorns as he began his journey to the western end of the thicket. “Ouch!” he exclaimed as he felt the pricks. Then he stopped and slowly turned and saw The Orphan smiling at him, and grinned:
“Say,” he began, “why can’t I go around?” he asked, indicating with a sweep of his arm the southern edge of the chaparral, and intimating that it would be far more pleasant to skirt the thorns than to buck against them. “These d––––d thorns ain’t no joke!” he added emphatically.
The outlaw’s smile enlarged and he glanced quickly at the bowlder to see that all was as it should be.
“You can go around in one day afoot,” he replied. “By that time they”–pointing to the Apaches–“will have made a day’s journey on cayuses. And we simply mustn’t let them get the best of us that way.”
Shields grinned and turned half-way around again: “It’s a whole lot dry out here,” he said, “and my canteen is on my cayuse.”
“Here, pardner,” replied The Orphan, holding out his canteen and watching the effect of the familiarity. “Seven swallows is the dose.”
The sheriff faced him, took the vessel, counted seven swallows and returned it.
“I’m some moist now,” he remarked, as he returned to the thorns. “It’s too d––––n bad you’re bad,” he grumbled. “You’d make a blamed good cow-puncher.”
The Orphan, still smiling, placed his hands on hips and watched the rapidly disappearing arm of the law.
“He’s all right–too bad he’ll make me shoot him,” he soliloquized, turning toward his post. As he crawled through a particularly badly matted bit of chaparral he stopped to release himself and laughed outright. “How in thunder did he get so far west? My trail was as plain as day, too.” When he had reached his destination and had settled down to watch the bowlder he laughed again and muttered: “Mebby he figured it out that I was doubling back and was laying for me to show up. And that’s just the way I would have gone, too. He ain’t any fool, all right.”