“Say, you, here!” he remarked to the chief. “We’ll give you one wohaw. You set down and wait a while. We’ll ride on up to the wohaws.”
“All right,” said the Osage partisan in good humor. “Him say you give wohaw. We bring you paper.”
They disposed themselves on the grass, their bows unstrung.
“You seem to be all the time hearing from this man McMasters,” said McCoyne. “How come he’s on ahead of you so far?”
“That’s a long story,” said Jim Nabours. “He did ride with us for a while.”
“I knew that man over at Baxter and on the Missouri border,” ruminated the man from Abilene. “Quiet sort of fellow—mysterious—never did say much. I was figuring on a market over there for Texas cattle. But I learned about a gang of raiders in there that had been cutting every herd that came up from Texas bound for Missouri or Iowa or Illinois. Those border ruffians killed probably a dozen men altogether. They tied up and whipped maybe a dozen more. They terrorized every trail outfit that came through there, and the natural result was that they kept off St. Louis from ever becoming a real cow town. Nothing could get through. A little thing sometimes makes a heap of difference later on in big things.
“The leader of that gang was a ruffian by name of Rudabaugh,” he added. “The Missourians finally run him south.”
“Yes,” said Nabours quietly. “The Texans have finally run him north again.”
“And this man McMasters was after him?” McCoyne turned suddenly.
“He might be. He is now. He’s been keeping ahead of us, and that’s the reason.”