CHAPTER XXV
THE THREADS MEET
It could not have been later than ten o’clock in the morning when a puncher with sharp eyes might have seen two figures approaching the Bar T ranch house on horseback. They rode needlessly close together and swung their clasped and gauntleted hands like happy children.
One was a girl into whose radiant eyes a new wonder had come, and the other a handsome, tanned young man bathed in a deliriously happy expression.
“Isn’t it jolly to be married without anyone’s knowing?” cried Julie. “Oh, but won’t they be surprised at home?”
“Rather!” remarked Bud, with a sobered expression. “I only hope your father doesn’t widow you just as I ride into the yard with the olive branch.”
“Stop it, Bud! What puts such awful thoughts into your head?”
“Experience. Your father was so mad about my getting the sheep across the river that he 302 started his punchers walking home that same night, and nobody has seen him since.”
Larkin spoke the truth, but little exaggerated. Beef Bissell, humiliated, beaten, and forced to accept the small end of a deal for once in his life, had started from the useless cowmen’s camp by the Gray Bull the very night of the crossing. He ordered the men to follow and round up their stampeded horses and then to ride home.