“Baca alone now,” corrected Ducky. “Bennett helped at first, making inquiries from his business connections, and so on. We thought if we could unearth some investment of my uncle’s we might follow it up; but there was a silly gunplay on the range between Bennett’s men and ours, and Bennett thought he had better withdraw from the investigation; because Quinliven took it up, you know—grouchy old sorehead!—talked pretty rough to Bennett, and took our account over to the other bank.”
“What was the trouble about—mavericks?”
“I hardly know—pure cussedness, I guess. Nothing worth quarreling about. Tommy Garst and one of our boys had some words about some spring up in the mountains. All foolishness—nobody had any real title to it and everybody’s cattle watered there; so it made no difference who claimed it. But they got to shooting over it—silly fools! Both gone now.”
“Nobody hurt?”
“Dah!” said Ducky scornfully. “Well, how about that answer?”
Neighbor looked at his own toes with painstaking speculative interest. To assist the process he cocked his head on one side and screwed his mouth up. At last he glanced over at Ducky.
“I know a lot if I could only think of it,” he announced plaintively. With a thoughtful face and apparently without his own knowledge, he broke into song, with a gay, lilting voice:
“Here I am, a-comin’ on the run—
Best durn cowboy ’at ever pulled a gun!
Hi-yi-yi-yippy; yippy-yi-yi-yi!