As for the lady, she stayed at a ranch over night and went out early in the morning, taking a short-cut through the nesters' lanes for Chula Vista. A telegram must be sent to the receiving company that the cattle would be delivered on the twentieth, the cattle-cars must be ordered from the railroad, and the cattle inspector notified of the change; for the grass was eaten down to the rocks at Chula Vista, and a wait at the pens would be fatal. All these details Henry Lee trusted to his daughter, and, forgetting the frivolous nothings of yesterday, she rode past the Bat Wing outfit without stopping or waving her hand. Then somebody put something on Bowles' horse and they started the day with a circus.
A second day, full of excitement and rough riding, followed, and then the gang took pity on the poor tenderfoot and left him to think it over. But Bowles was not broken in spirit; far from it, for he had been secretly longing for a horse that would buck. He was rapidly becoming so wise that deception was no longer practicable. When a man has an old staid cow-pony rise up under him and try to paw the white out of the moon, he is liable to look over his rigging rather carefully to see what it was all about; and if he should find a yellow spot on the flap of his saddle-blanket, a tender place on his horse's rump, and a suspicious odor of carbon bisulphide in the air, he is likely to shy away from unfriendly horsemen, even if he never heard of "high-lifing" a bronk. Those were eventful days for Samuel Bowles, and he found himself learning fast, when Henry Lee suddenly called him aside and told him to go with Brigham.
Brigham was taking a bunch of dogies back to the home ranch and he needed a man to help him—also the boss was getting a little tired of these sudden accidents to Bowles. He was not conducting a circus or a Wild West Show but a serious and precarious business, and a touch of "high-life" at the wrong time might stampede his whole herd of cattle. So he told the tenderfoot to go on the drive with Brigham.
There is a good deal left unsaid in a cow camp—so much, in fact, that a stranger never knows what is going on; and Brigham had been as silent as the rest while Bowles was taking his medicine. Even on the drive he was strangely quiet, chewing away soberly at his tobacco and looking out from under his hat with squinting and cynical eyes. They were friends now, as far as a tenderfoot can expect to have a friend, but Brigham said nothing about stringing the cattle, and asked no questions about gay New York—he had something on his mind. And when the time came he spoke it out.
"Say, stranger," he said, still calling him by that cold name which marked him as a man apart, "did you see Dixie Lee back in New York last winter?"
It was a bolt out of the blue sky; but Bowles was trained to evasions—he had lived in polite society and tried to keep friends with Truth.
"Miss Lee?" he repeated in tones of wonderment.
"W'y, sure," answered Brigham; "she was back there all winter."
"So I hear," observed Bowles; "but there were about four million other people there too, Brig; so I can't say for sure. Why? What made you ask?"
"Oh—nothin'," mumbled Brig, playing with the rowel on his spur as he watched the cattle graze; "only it seemed like, the way she spoke to you the other day, you'd mebbe met before. Some of the boys said they reckoned you knowed her back there—she talked so kinder friendly-like."