“What did you say your name was?”
“Clifford Henderson. I can easy tell him that, because if he has let so many years go without arresting me he’ll not begin now,” said he to himself. “This man doesn’t know where I live and I won’t tell him.”
“Well, if you haven’t seen them cattle, I’ll go,” said the horseman, turning his nag about. “I’d feel a heap safer if you would go on with me—but I tell you, you would have to explain why you asked so many questions. So long!”
I may interrupt my story here long enough to say that when the horseman went home he reported his accidental meeting with Henderson, together with the questions he asked, at which Mr. Davenport was greatly alarmed, although he tried not to show it. That very night worked a change in Bob’s fortunes which he did not like. Up to this time he had been permitted to go as he pleased among the cattlemen, who all liked him and did their best to teach him, but now he was obliged to remain indoors, or at least within reach of his father’s voice. His father couldn’t bear to have him out of his sight. The very next day the will was drawn up; and although Mr. Davenport frequently promised himself that the first time he went to Austin he would go through the process of adopting Bob, so as to give him the whole of his money in case anything happened to him, he never got beyond the sound of his own dinner horn. It was a terrible thing for the invalid to reflect that he had brought Bob up to believe that he was his own son, and somehow he could not straighten it out.
Henderson was on nettles when he rode away from the horseman. He knew that his brother was somewhere in Texas, and he hoped he was on a cattle ranch far out of reach of him; but the way the horseman pronounced the name fairly took his breath away.
“Of all the men that I ever expected to hear of, that Davenport is the beat!” said Henderson, throwing his reins upon his horse’s neck and shoving his hands into his pockets. “I don’t believe I have thought of him for six months, or if I did, I thought of him as dead, and here he has turned up when I least expected it. By George! all my desire to possess his wealth comes back to me; but how I am to get it I don’t know. That boy has plenty of rifles to back him up, as Scanlan said he would.”
This was the one thing of which I spoke that effectually destroyed all Henderson’s idea of making a better man of himself. It was easy enough to be good when temptation was not thrown in his way, but when temptation came, he was no better than anybody else. He rode along for two hours, thinking over Bob’s habits, and wondering if it would be possible for him to steal the boy away, as he had been on the point of doing in St. Louis, and not until the sun began to set did he look around for a camping-place.
“I wish Scanlan was here now,” said he. “I am sure he would be apt to think of something. There’s three men,” he added, shading his eyes with his hand and gazing toward a belt of post-oaks in which he intended to make his camp. “I wonder if they are good-natured, or if they mean to go through my pockets? Time will tell.”
When he first discovered the three men in the timber two of them were lying down, and the other was moving about as if making preparations for supper. One saw his approach and called the attention of the others to it, and then all got up and looked at him. Evidently the men were not inclined to trust strangers, for he saw that one of them, whom he took to be spokesman, raised up without anything in his hands, while the others stood with their rifles in the hollow of their arms. Henderson thought this looked a little suspicious, but kept on and in a few minutes was close enough to the camp to accost the men.
“How do you do, strangers?” said he.