CHAPTER X.
OFF FOR AUSTIN.
What Bob Davenport thought when he saw me waving that pocket-book to him, I don’t know. I held it extended in my left hand and tapped it with my right as if to say, “Here’s your will,” until he came up, and then I saw his face was whiter than it was when he thought he had lost his cattle.
“You’ve got it! You’ve got it as sure as the world!” he exclaimed, as soon as he came within speaking distance. “Is it mine?”
“Tom Mason found it for you, and it is all yours,” said I. “I don’t know how much there is in it, because I haven’t read the will; but I heard your father say that it was all yours.”
With hands that trembled Bob took the pocket-book and opened it; and as he gazed upon the hand-writing of his father now laid away among the willows, his eyes filled with tears. Mr. Davenport, I afterward learned, had been buried near the scene of his death, and the cattlemen had made a heavy box and loaded it with stones to protect it from the wolves. Bob had not yet recovered from his father’s sudden death, but Clifford Henderson was not at the funeral, and when remonstrated with by the cattlemen for his want of sympathy for the fate of his brother, said gruffly:
“Why should I want to see him buried? He drove me away from home by his ingratitude eight years ago, and I have never got over it. He seems to have one mourner there, and that is enough.”
Bob Davenport, we repeat, read the will from the beginning to the end, also the letter of instructions, and we sat on our horses waiting for him to finish. When he was through he folded up the letter, closed the pocket-book, and handed it back to me.
“Why, Bob, it is yours,” I said.
“No,” he replied; “you fellows found it. I should never have seen it if it hadn’t been for you, and I wish you to take and hand it to Mr. Chisholm. When he says I may have it all, I will take it; not before. I left him here at the wagon when I came up.”
We followed Bob back to the wagon, and there we found Mr. Chisholm, smoking as usual. He knew there was something up, for we had waited almost fifteen minutes for Bob to read the letter, but he said not a word until I rode up and gave him the pocket-book. Then he opened it and read the first line of the will, after which he folded it up and placed it in his own pocket.