Bob returned with the last comer—a gaunt, brown man with a gift for silence.
“My friend, Mr. Jones,” Bob explained gravely. “He stakes his horse on that hilltop. Bully grass there. And quiet. He likes quiet. He doesn’t care for strangers a-tall—not unless I stand good for ’em.”
The camp—a single room, some fourteen feet by eighteen, flat roofed, made of stone with a soapstone fireplace—was built in a fenced yard on a little low red flat, looped about by the cañon, pleasant with shady cedars, overhung by a red and mighty mountain at the back, faced by a mightier mountain of white limestone. The spring gushed out at the contact of red and white.
The bunch of saddle horses was shut up in the water pen. Preparation for dinner went forward merrily, not without favorable comment from Mr. Smith for Bob’s three bearskins, a proud carpet on the floor. Mr. Jones had seen them before; Hales and Johnny kept honorable silence on that theme. Hales and Mr. Smith set a good example by removing belt and gun; an example followed by Bob, but by neither Johnny nor Mr. Jones. The latter gentleman indeed had leaned his rifle in the corner beyond the table. But while the discussion of bearskins was most animated, Johnny caught Mr. Jones’ eye, and arched a brow. Johnny next took occasion to roll his own eye slowly at the unconscious backs of Mr. Hales and Mr. Smith—and then transferred his gaze, very pointedly, to the long rifle in the corner. Shortly after, Mr. Jones rose and took a seat behind the table, with the long rifle at his right hand.
“Well, Mr. Bob,” said Hales when dinner was over, “here’s your thirty dollars. You give Smith a bill of sale and get your pardner to witness it. Me, I’m telling you good-by. I’m due to lead Smith’s discard pony about forty mile north to-night, and set him loose about daylight—up near the White Oaks stage road. Thank’ee kindly. Good-by, all!”
“Wait a minute, Toad,” said Smith briskly. “I’ll catch up my new cayuse and side you a little ways. Stake him out in good grass, some quiet place—like my pardner here.” He grinned at Mr. Jones, who smiled, attentive. “I’ll hang my saddle in a tree and hoof it back about dark. Safe enough here—all good fellows. And I sure like that bear meat. To say nothing of being full up of myself for society.”
“We’ll do the dishes,” said Johnny. “Bob, you rope me up the gentlest of my hyenas and we’ll slip down to Puddingstone presently.”
“Well, good luck to you, Mr. Dines,” said Hales at the door.
“So long.”
“That horse you’ve got staked out, Mr. Jones,” said Johnny, when the others were catching horses, “how about him? I’ve got a private horse out in the water pen. Shall we swap? Saddles too? You’re a little the biggest, but you can let out my stirrups a notch, and I can take up a notch in yours, up on that pinnacle when I go for my new horse and come back—about dark. That way, you might ride down the cañon with Bob. I think maybe—if it was important—Bob might not find the horses he wants, and might lay out to-night. And you might tell him you was coming back to camp. But you can always change your mind, you know. ‘All you have to do is ride.’”