"Then there's the Gila monster," suggested the boy, "they were telling stories about them on the train coming down."
"He looks ugly, and I have been told some very bad things about him," said the chief gravely, "but so far as I am concerned, I have seen no warrant for them. I can hardly see how so lazy and sluggish a creature as a Gila monster can be called dangerous. I have tried to provoke them by shoving sticks down their throats in order to find out how they behaved when angry, but I have never been able to make them show fight."
"Only just the some times," put in the Mexican, who had followed the conversation with intense interest, "there is justa the five, six days in eacha year, the Gila is moocha bad, other times, nothing at all."
"That's possible," said Barrs, "but I guess I never struck those days. But I mustn't keep blatherskiting here all night, come along to the rest of the fellows. You want to get acquainted, I reckon, and you'll find them a mighty lively set of boys."
Most of the men had put in their time in the Southwest, and Roger heard more stories of the old days before wire fences were instituted and when the whole prairie was open to their herds than he had ever dreamed could be found out of books. It seemed good to the boy to be back in the harness again, after the lapse of a couple of months since he saw Masseth and the party ride away along the edge of the Canyon, and he was glad to find that he could take his place as a man and do a man's work, even in a new environment.
The agent's warning about the dangers of the Pecos country and the stories told in the evening of times past, however, never seemed real to Roger, any more real than the tales of history, until suddenly they were made grimly lifelike. One evening, sitting in Barrs' tent, talking with him, Roger suddenly heard a sharp report and a bullet came tearing through the cloth of the tent not eighteen inches above his head. Almost simultaneously, it seemed to the boy, Barrs had thrown down the lamp and put it out, grasped his revolver and leaped from the tent. The other man who had been sitting near by was lying prone, working his way along the ground to the other tent.
Roger had not seen him drop to cover, the whole had happened so quickly, but as soon as he realized, he lost no time in following suit. As he did so, and his ear came close to the ground, the boy could hear the sound of hoofs galloping at topmost speed and receding into the distance. Suddenly, from far off, came the sound of voices, like to a challenge and response, and then a fusillade of shots broken by a shriek.
"Jones!" called Barrs.
The man called stepped forward promptly.
"Follow the trail in the direction that man went, and see if you can find out who fired those shots we heard. I'll overtake you in a moment. Wilkins, take Doughty with you and follow the trail to the north, to see if you can find out from any one who passed there a few minutes before. The rest can look after the camp."