A sound of scrambling hoofs laboring up the sharp hill from the direction of Meander came to him suddenly, startling him out of his reflections. His thought leaped to the instant conclusion that it was Agnes; he laid light fuel to the coals, blowing it to quicken a blaze that would guide and welcome her.
When the rider appeared an eager flame was laving the rocks in the yellow light, and Slavens was standing, peering beyond its radius. A glance told him that it was not she for whom he had lighted his guiding fire. It was a man. In a moment he drew up on the other side of the blaze and leaned over, looking sharply into Slavens’ face.
“Hello!” he hailed loudly, as if shouting across a river.
Slavens returned his bellowed hail with moderation, recognizing in the dusty traveler Comanche’s distinguished chief of police, Ten-Gallon, of the diamond 295 rings. Slavens never had been able to feel anything but the most lively contempt for the fellow; now, since learning of Ten-Gallon’s treatment of Agnes, and his undoubted hand in the plot of Hun Shanklin and Boyle against himself, the doctor held him to be nothing short of an open enemy.
“I’m lookin’ for a man by the name of Boyle,” announced Ten-Gallon. “Are you holdin’ down camp for him?”
“He’s on down the road a little way.”
“Oh, yes,” said Ten-Gallon, “I know you now. You’re the feller that beat him to it. Well, I had a complaint ag’in’ you for stealin’ a man’s coat over in Comanche.”
“I’m out of your jurisdiction right now, I guess; but I’ll go down to Comanche and give you a chance at me if you want to take it,” the doctor told him, considerably out of humor, what with his own disappointment and the fellow’s natural insolence.
The police chief of Comanche laughed.
“I’d be about the last man to lay hands on you for anything you done to that feller, even if you’d ’a’ took his hide along with his coat,” said he.