CHAPTER XVI
AT THE RESERVOIR
Scott and Baxter lay awake far into the small hours of the morning discussing the events of the past evening. Baxter had been in the West long enough to have lost his aversion to a gun, if indeed he had ever had any, and could not understand Scott’s scruples.
“If ever a man had need of gun,” he exclaimed, “you have now. Here you are traipsing around the country with a bad man on your trail and not so much as a cap pistol in your belt. Why, man, if you’d had a gun there to-night you could have blown that skunk into kingdom come and ended all this rumpus.”
“And thought about it all the rest of my life,” Scott replied.
Baxter looked at him hopelessly and gave it up. “Well, you ought to be pretty safe up there at the dam if they don’t know you are there. Ramsey is evidently looking out for you down there and I’ll keep a weather eye on the pass here. Let’s go to sleep so that you can get away from here in the morning before anybody sees you.”
The nerves of youth are easily settled and Scott was soon sleeping as peacefully as though nothing had happened. At his first snore Baxter raised up cautiously and crawled out of bed. He slipped on his clothes and took his seat at the open doorway with his revolver lying within easy reach. “Let that devil come snooping around here,” he muttered, “and I’ll see how my scruples work on him.”
At the first streak of day the faithful guardian arose and quietly prepared breakfast. “Come out of it, Burton, and throw some of this into you,” he called to Scott when all was ready.
“Why didn’t you call me earlier?” Scott complained.
“Because I had not been out dodging bullets all night and did not need the sleep.”