The other did not answer with a smile. Apparently the reminiscence pleased him less than it did the older man. He spurred his horse impatiently, and it plunged forward through the drifted banks of white sand.
Mizzoo hastened to overtake him, still chuckling. "Old Man Walker never knowed what a proposition he was handing us when he ordered us to drive the old mountain-lion out of his lair! Looks like the six of us ought to have done the trick. Them other fellows looked as wild as bears, and you was just like a United States soldier marching on a Mexican strongholt, not stopping at nothing, and it ain't for me to say how brave I done. Pity you and me was at the tail-end of the attacking party. Fust thing we knowed, them other four galoots was falling backwards a-getting out of that trap of a cove, and the bullets was whizzing about our ears—"
He broke off to shout with laughter. "And it was all done by one old settler and his gal, them standing out open and free with their breech-loaders, and us hiking out for camp like whipped curs!"
The young man was impatient, but he compelled himself to speak calmly. "As I never got around the spur of the mountain before you fellows were in full retreat, I object to being classed with the whipped curs, and you'll bear that in mind, Mizzoo. You saw the girl all right, didn't you?"
"You bet I did, and as soon as I see her, I knowed it was the same I'd came across on the trail, seven year ago. I'd have knowed it from her daddy, of course, but there wasn't no mistaking HER. Her daddy give it to us plain that if he ever catched one of us inside his cove he'd kill us like so many coyotes, and I reckon he would. Well, he's got as much right to his claim as anybody else—this land don't belong to nobody, and there he's been a-squatting considerable longer than we've laid out this ranch. He was in the right of it, but what I admire was his being able to hold his rights. Lots of folks has rights but they ain't man enough to hold 'em. And if von could have seen that gal, her eyes like two big burning suns, and her mouth closed like a steel-trap, and her hand as steady on that trigger as the mountain rock behind her! Lord, Bill! what a trembly, knock-kneed, meaching sort of a husband she's a-going to fashion to her hand, one of these days! But PRETTY? None more so. And a-going all to waste out here in the desert!"
They rode on for some time in silence, save for the intermittent chuckling of the cattleman as visions of his companions' pale faces and scurrying forms rose before his mind.
"And now about that child, seven years ago," the young man said, when the last hoarse sound of mirth had died away.
"Why, yes, me and the boys was bringing about two thousand head up to Abiline when we come on to this same pardner and another man walking the trail, with a little gal coming behind 'em on her pony. And it was this same gal. I reckon she was seven or eight year old, then. Well, sir, I just thought as I looked at her, that I never seen a prettier sight in this world and I reckon I ain't, for when I looked at the same gal the other day, the gun she was holding up to her eye sort of dazzled me so I couldn't take stock of all her good points. But seeing that little gal out there in the plains it was like hearing an old-fashioned hymn at the country meeting-house and knowing a big basket dinner was to follow. I can't express it more deep than that. We went into camp that evening, and all of us got pretty soft and mellow, what from the unusualness of the meeting, and we asked the old codger if we could all come over to his camp and shake hands with the gal—he'd drawed back from us about a mile, he was that skeered to be sociable. So after considerable haggling and jawing, he said we could, and here we come, just about sundown, all of us looking sheepish enough to be carved for mutton, but everlasting determined to take that gal by the paw."
"Well?" said the young man who had often heard this story, but had never been treated to the sequel, "what happened then, Mizzoo? You always stop at the same place. Didn't you shake hands with her?"
The other ruminated in deep silence for some time, then rejoined, "I don't know how it is—a fellow can talk about the worst devilment in creation with a free rein, and no words hot enough to blister his tongue, but let him run up against something simple like that, and the bottom of his lungs seems to fall out. I guess they ain't no more to be told. That was all there was to it, though I might add that the next day we come along by old Whisky Simeon's joint that sets out on the sand-hills, you know, and we put spurs to our bronks and went whooping by, with old Whisky Sim a-staring and a-hollering after us like he thought we was crazy. I don't know as I had missed a drunk before for five year, when the materials was ready-found for its making. And I ain't never forgot the little kid with the brown hair and the eyes that seen to your bottom layer, like a water-witch a-penetrating the ground with a glance, seeing through dirt and clay and rocks to what water they is."