Bancroft considered for only a moment. His dilemma was clear: he must either buy this haltered freedom from Jenkins or kill him in his tracks. This latter alternative was not to be considered; and doubtless before long it would be possible to turn the tables on the creature and escape from his clutches.
Jenkins folded away in his pocket-book a check and a roll of bills and smiled as he looked at Bancroft’s haggard face. “I hope, Mr. Dela—ah, pardon me,—Mr. Bancroft, that I have not kept you too long from your affairs at the bank.” As his eyes followed the banker’s disappearing figure with a gleam of satisfaction, he patted his breast pocket and whispered:
“Now for the other score!”
CHAPTER IX
PERILS IN THE NIGHT
Red Jack and José Gonzalez joined the forces of the Socorro Springs ranch while the cattle of the morning’s round-up were being driven to the watering-place near the ranch house. Across the road from the house stood a large grove of cottonwoods; a little beyond that, in the valley, a deep pond had been dug, into which flowed the outlets from the several springs. The cattle from a score of miles roundabout were accustomed to come to this pond, with its circling belt of trees, for water and for midday rest in the shade.
Here the round-up was in progress, and Conrad galloped out to meet the new hand and give him instructions. As he rode off toward the hills after a bunch of straggling cattle Curtis looked after him with an approving eye. “He knows how to fork a horse, at least,” he thought. In the afternoon José was set to work cutting out and bunching the two- and three-year-old steers and later at helping with the branding. Conrad watched his handling of the branding irons, and he and all the rest stopped their work to follow his movements with critical eyes as he roped and brought to the ground a belligerent steer. The superintendent was well satisfied. “At last I’ve got a man who knows the business and has some sabe,” he thought. “If he goes on as well as he begins I’ll keep him after the shipping is done.”
The next day the round-up crept slowly southward, accompanied by the chuck-wagon and a drove of fresh horses. At noon the cattle gathered during the morning were bunched at Adobe Springs, the next watering-place toward the Mexican border. Gonzalez was the only Mexican among the cowboys, the rest being Americans of one sort or another—from Texas, Colorado, the Northwest, and the Middle West. All felt toward him the contemptuous scorn born of difference in race and consequent conviction of superior merit. They had no scruples about making known their prejudice, and more than once his face flushed and his hand darted toward the knife hidden in his bosom. Yet, as the day wore on and they saw that he excelled the best of them in handling the lasso and in the cunning of his movements when cutting out the steers from the herd, they began to show him the respect that skill of any sort inspires in those who know with what effort it is acquired.