He felt a bit proud of himself that morning. Only last night he had learned that he was the son of Waring of Sonora; a name to live up to, if Western standards meant anything, and he thought they did.
The fact that he was the son of James Waring overcame for the time being the vague disquietude of mind attending his knowledge that his mother and father had become estranged. He thought he understood now why his mother had made him promise to go unarmed upon the range. His companions, to the last man, "packed a gun."
Heretofore their joshing had not bothered him. In fact, he had rather enjoyed the distinction of going unarmed, and he had added to this distinction by acquiring a skill with the rope that occasioned much natural jealousy among his fellows. To be top-hand with a rope among such men as Blaze Andrews, Slim Trivet, Red Bender, and High-Chin Bob, the foreman, was worth all the patient hours he had given to persistent practice with the reata.
But to-day he questioned himself. His mother had made him promise to go unarmed because she feared he would become like his father. Why hadn't she told him more about it all? He felt that she had taken a kind of mean advantage of his unwavering affection for her. He was a man, so far as earning his wage was concerned. And she was the best woman in the world—but then women didn't understand the unwritten customs of the range.
On a sandy ridge he reined up and gazed at the desert below. The bleak flats wavered in the white light of noon. The farthest hills to the south seemed but a few miles away.
For some time he focused his gaze at the Notch, from which the road sprang and flowed in slow undulations to a vanishing point in the blank spaces of the west. His pony, Gray Leg, head up and nostrils working, twitched back one ear as Lorry spoke: "You see it, too?"
Gray Leg continued to gaze into the distance, occasionally stamping an impatient forefoot, as though anxious to be off. Lorry lowered his glass and raised it again. In the circle of the binoculars he saw a tiny, distant figure dismount from a black horse and walk back and forth across the road directly below the Notch. Lorry wiped his glasses and centered them on the Notch again. The horseman had led his horse to a clump of brush. Presently the twinkling front of an automobile appeared—a miniature machine that wormed slowly through the Notch and descended the short pitch beyond. Suddenly the car swerved and stopped. Lorry saw a flutter of white near the machine. Then the concealed horseman appeared on foot. Lorry slipped the glass in his shirt.
"We'll just mosey over and get a closer look," he told his pony. "Things don't look just right over there."
Gray Leg, scenting a new interest, tucked himself together. The sand sprayed to little puffs of dust as he swung to a lope.
Lorry was curious—and a bit elated at the promise of a break in the monotony of hunting stray cattle. Probably some Eastern tourist had taken the grade below the Notch too fast and ditched his machine. Lorry would ride over and help him to right the car and set the pilgrim on his way rejoicing. He had helped to right cars before. Last month, for instance; that big car with the uniformed driver and the wonderfully gowned women. He recalled the fact that one of them had been absolutely beautiful, despite her strange mufflings. She had offered to pay him for his trouble. When he refused she had thanked him eloquently with her fine eyes and thrown him a kiss as he turned to go. She had thrown that kiss with two hands! There was nothing stingy about that lady!