The lean, leather-skinned, sandy-mustached cattleman uttered words not meet for print, but expressive of hearty pleasure. "Ain't you had enough of it, Bill?" he added. "I'd think you'd want to lay up for tomorrow's work."
"Oh, I ain't sleepy," the young man declared, as they rode away side by side. "I couldn't close an eye tonight—and I want to talk."
The cattleman chuckled enjoyingly. It was lonely and monotonous work, riding back and forth through the darkness, keeping a sharp lookout for wolves or Indians, driving straggling cattle back to the herd, in brief, doing the picket duty of the plains.
Mizzoo was so called from his habit of attributing his most emphatic aphorisms to "his aunt, Miss Sue of Missouri"—a lady held by his companions to be a purely fictitious character, a convenient "Mrs. Harris" to give weight to sayings worn smooth from centuries of use.
Of all the boys of the ranch, Mizzoo found Wilfred Compton most companionable. When off duty, they were usually to be found near each other, whether awake or asleep; and when Mizzoo, on entering some village at the edge of the desert, sought relaxation from a life of routine by shooting through the windows and spurring his pony into the saloons, it was the young man, commonly known as Bill, who lingered behind to advance money for damages to the windows, or who kept close to the drunken ranger in order to repair the damages Mizzoo had done to his own soul and body.
"I'll talk my head off," Mizzoo declared, "if that'll keep you on the move with me, for it's one thing meeting a ghost in the desert all alone, and quite another when there's a pair of us. Yes, I know you don't believe nothing I say about that spirit, and I only hope we'll come on it tonight! It ain't been a week since I see something creeping along behind me whilst I was riding the line, a little thing as swift as a jack-rabbit and as sly as a coyote—something with long arms and short legs and the face of an Injun—"
"Of course it WAS an Indian," returned the young man carelessly. "He is hanging about here to steal some of our horses. I don't want you to talk about your ghost, I've heard of him a thousand times."
"Bill, the more you talk about a ghost, the more impressive he gets. I tell you that wasn't no live Injun! Didn't I blaze away at him with my six-shooter and empty all my barrels for nothing? No, sir, it's the same spirit that haunts the trail from Vernon, Texas, to Coffeyville. I've shot at that red devil this side of Fort Sill, and at Skeleton Spring, and at Bull Foot Spring, and a mile from Doan's store—always at night, for it never rises except at night, as befits a good ghost. I reckon I'll waste cartridges on that spook as long as I hit the trail, but I don't never expect to draw blood. Others has saw him, too, but me more especial. I reckon I'm the biggest sinner of the G-Bar and has to be plagued most frequent with visitations to make me a better man when I get to be old."
"He's a knowing old ghost if he's found you out, Mizzoo, but if you want my company, tonight, you'll drop the Indian. What I want you to talk about is that little girl you met on the trail down in Texas, seven years ago."
Mizzoo burst out in a hearty laugh. "I reckon it suits you better to take her as a little kid," he cried, his tall form shaking convulsively. "I'll never forget how you looked, Bill, when we tried to run a bluff on her daddy last month!"