“Well, all right, all right,” responded Lou Gore; “I’ll tell her anything. Nobody in town has had any supper yet. We can’t have no dance now. This is the beatingest Fourth of July ever I did see. I declare, you cowboys give me more trouble than my gamblers.
“I don’t want to be nasty to you,” she went on. “But you’ve got to keep out of my kitchen. Here, take a couple of keys and go on upstairs and go to bed. I declare, I am right tired my own self.”
Meekly obedient, although reluctant not to see the mistress of Del Sol before he slept, Jim Nabours clumsily climbed the stairs, the boy close at his heels.
“What’s wrong, Mister Jim?” asked Cinquo solicitously. “Ain’t we sold out all right?”
“Yes,” said his foreman gruffly. “We’ve won out on the cows. But we’ve lost out on the land. You know that trunk?”
“Shore. I do. It was always getting in the road everywheres.”
“It won’t be no more! It’s gone—lost—stole. It was worth ten times as much as all our cows. Old Rudabaugh knows where it is, but he ain’t so apt to tell.”
As he spoke he flung open the door of a room, one of many precisely alike on either side of the upper hall. But he paused.
“Hello!” said he. “There’s some one in here now, and he’s gone to bed.”
The bed indeed was occupied—occupied by a long and motionless figure, a pillow slip drawn across his face, the hands folded on the breast.