"Oh, sooner or later the boys'll have to sell out to the Trust."
"Hal's worried; very much worried. Is it about the asphalt?"
"Worried, is he? What do you suppose a feller about his age is usually worried about? A woman, Parson, just a female woman; and he's in luck if it's only one."
There was a peculiar note in the air. It wasn't a sound, but the shadow of a coming sound. Both men made a simultaneous movement, paused and listened, then looked solemnly at each other. The beat of hoofs and the advancing rush of man and horse was in the air. In a whirlwind of dust the bronchos were brought from a run to a standstill in a few short, staccato jumps, as the cattle horse is trained, and out of the dusk of the morning Hal advanced with a protecting arm about Wah-na-gi.
"Bill, pay Chavanaugh and these Indians twice the sum I promised them and let them go. I don't want to involve them in any trouble I may have with the agent or the Government, and put the ranch in trim for a scrap. Let no one on the premises without my permission and place my men so as to prevent surprise. They have my orders."
Bill started to whistle but Hal continued: "And have me a fresh horse saddled. I'll go out and take charge of the men as soon as I can explain matters here."
Bill's face was a study in lengthening shadows, but by the time Hal had finished he had got his second wind and managed to take up a hole in his mental belt and addressed the situation thus: "Well, boys, the boss is agoin' some; but he pays as he goes, so I guess you don't mind a little excitement."
"Excitement!" exclaimed Rough-house Joe. Joe had gained his sobriquet because he expressed the joy of being drunk by breaking and smashing things, not with malice, but in a buoyant spirit of playfulness. He was a long, lanky, loosely joined hulk with a solemn, cadaverous face, flanked by enormous ears that stood out from his head like ventilators on a ship. Joe was the kind of person that dies young in the cattle country. He had been unusually lucky. "Excitement?" he drawled. "A scrap with Injins? Why, it's pussy wants a corner. Why, if the boss'll say the word, and the troops'll just look the other way, we'll put Ladd and the Agency out of business before you could sing 'Blest Be the Tie that Binds,' omittin' the first and last stanzas. As fer the boss? We'll stay in the saddle with him if he rides through hell; eh, boys?"
And the crowd of Hal's retainers went off yip-yipping and yapping in the approved cowboy style in their enthusiasm for the young boss and uplifted by the consciousness of having earned a handsome addition to their month's wages.
As soon as Big Bill and the men were gone Hal turned to McCloud with a smile: "Got another boarder, John; you won't be so lonesome now."