The following morning Bill McAllister was with the cavvy when Allen trotted down a slope and rode toward him.
“Yuh send it all right?” the old man asked eagerly.
“Yeh.” Allen slipped to the ground and unsaddled his horse, which was drooping from fatigue. “There is two things I wants yuh to do. Don’t tell her any more than yuh have to—’cause she might act hopeful an’ give her hand away—but tell Dot to insult Spur Treadwell—call him names, say he ain’t nothin’ but a bull of a man an’ that she’s plumb disgusted with him. Then I wants yuh to make me night wrangler.”
With that, even before Bill McAllister could ask the reason for these requests, Allen curled up beneath a clump of brush and was asleep.
CHAPTER XXIII
AN OLD FRIEND
Bill watched him for a few minutes, then swung into his saddle and started to ride the pasture. He had reached the lower end when he saw a horseman galloping toward him from the direction of the ranch. A few minutes later, he recognized the rider as Snoots Stevens, a tall, gawky man of thirty with a long, thin face.
“Why for yuh out here?” McAllister asked after Stevens had brought his horse to a sliding stop.
“Nothin’—only——” Snoots broke off and then added: “Where’s that kid?”
“The kid—why?”
“Nothin’—only I hears them two twins talkin’ about him plenty—I hears them say they wasn’t goin’ to take no chances, but was goin’ to drop him,” Snoots blurted out.