“N-no, I think not. Oh, yes, I did hear that Colonel Whittaker and Daniels and Halliday were going over to the White Sands to hunt for Will Whittaker’s body. I told Emerson so. That’s the only thing I know of that would be likely to disturb him.”
A quick glance of intelligence flashed between Tuttle’s eyes and Ellhorn’s. Each was recalling Mead’s promise to surrender if Will Whittaker’s body could be produced. Tuttle stood silent, with his hands in his pockets, looking across the foothills to where Mead’s figure was disappearing against the horizon. Then without a word he walked to the corral, saddled a horse, and went off on the gallop in the same direction.
He came upon his friend at Alamo Springs, ten miles away. This was the best water hole on Mead’s ranch, and, indeed, the best in all that part of the Fernandez mountains, and was the one which the Fillmore Company particularly coveted. Its copious yield of water never diminished, and around the reservoir which Mead had constructed, half a mile below the spring, a goodly grove of young cottonwoods, which he had planted, made for the cattle a cool retreat from midday suns.
Tuttle found Mead standing beside the reservoir, flicking the water with his quirt, while the horse, with dropped bridle, waited meekly beside him. Tom dismounted and stood by Mead’s side, making some remark about the cattle that were grazing within sight.
“Tommy,” Emerson said abruptly, “I’ve about decided that I’ll give up this fight, let the Fillmore folks have the damned place for what they will give, and pull my freight.”
Tom looked surprised at this unheralded proposition, but paid no further attention to it. Instead, he plunged at once into the subject that concerned him.
“Emerson, what’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” Mead replied, looking at the horizon.
“Emerson, you’re lying, and you know it.”
“Well, then, nothing that can be helped.”