His horse, fresh and eager, knowing that it was heading for home, carried him over the road at a handsome gait. At the first stage-station out of Comanche, a matter of twenty-five miles, and of fifteen beyond his camp, he made inquiry about Agnes.
She had passed there the morning before, the man 293 in charge said, measuring Slavens curiously with his little hair-hedged eyes as he stood in the door of his shanty, half a cabbage-head in one hand, a butcher-knife in the other. Slavens thanked him and drew on the reins.
“I’m breaking in on your preparations for supper.”
“No; it’s dinner,” the man corrected.
“I didn’t know that you’d come to six-o’clock dinners in this part of the country,” the doctor laughed.
“Not as I know of,” the cook-horse-wrangler said. “This dinner that I’m gittin’ ready, stranger, is for tomorrow noon, when the stage comes by from Comanche. I always cook it the day before to be sure it’ll be ready on time.”
With that the forehanded cook turned and went back to his pot. As Slavens rode away he heard the cabbage crunching under the cook’s knife as he sliced it for the passengers of the Meander stage, to have it hot and steaming, and well soaked with the grease of corned beef, when they should arrive at noon on the morrow.
Dusk was settling when the doctor reached his tent. Before he dismounted he rode to a little clear place among the bewilderment of stones which gave him a view of half a mile, and he sat there looking a while down the stage-trail toward Comanche. Beyond him a few hundred yards another tent had been planted. In front of it a man sat cooking his supper over a little blaze. 294
“Boyle lost no time in getting here,” muttered the doctor, turning to his own shelter and kindling a fire on the ashes of other days.
Ashes were graying again over the embers long after he had boiled his pot of coffee and put away his can of warmed-over beans. Night was charged with a threat of frost, as is not uncommon in those altitudes at the beginning of September. It was so chilly that Slavens had drawn a blanket over his back as he sat before his dying fire, Indian fashion, on the ground, drawing what solace he could from his pipe.