“Yuh said yuh’d take me with yuh,” Allen said with assumed ignorance.
“That so. Yuh want to ride with me, or are yuh goin’ to fork that ol’ bag of bones?” McCann asked, and jerked a contemptuous thumb toward Princess.
“She ain’t much to look at, but I’ve had her ever since I was a kid, so I reckon I’ll ride her,” Allen said aggrievedly, seeming to resent One-wing’s abuse of his horse.
“Suit yourself,” McCann said indifferently.
He climbed into the buckboard and picked up the reins. He spoke to the horses, and they started out of town at a fast trot. Allen held the indignant Princess down to an awkward gait that was half trot and half gallop.
Allen was well pleased with his good luck. His arriving with McCann would lessen the chances of his being recognized. He had felt that he would run a great risk of this, for the Double R was not many miles from the Nations, the refuge of many a hunted man. And most outlaws and gunmen hated and feared him far more than many an honest citizen.
The road wound in and out between hills and followed the course of the Little Deadman’s Creek.
It was close to thirty miles from Malboro to the Double R, and it was well past noon before the road dipped into the valley and the ranch buildings appeared before them. The scene took Allen back to his boyhood, for he had been raised in just such a place. He marked the place where the old stockade had stood, for these buildings had been built in the days when the savage Comanche had laid claim to all this part of the country. Within the old stockade, the eight or ten houses had been built in the form of a rough square, with the main ranch building forming the southern side. Where once there had been only loopholes, there were now windows. All the houses were of one story, built of heavy logs and roofed with sod.
One-wing McCann brought his sweating horses to a sliding stop before the front porch. A puncher ran around the corner to take the horses, and as One-wing climbed from the buckboard, a man came out of the front door.
“Hello, One-wing.”