“And then you won’t be there,” Paula objected.
“I’ll take a day off. Is it a go?”
They reined to one side of the road, as she agreed, to pass three farm tractors, all with their trailage of ganged discs and harrows.
“Moving them across to the Rolling Meadows,” he explained. “They pay over horses on the right ground.”
Rising from the home valley, passing through cultivated fields and wooded knolls, they took a road busy with many wagons hauling road-dressing from the rock-crusher they could hear growling and crunching higher up.
“Needs more exercise than I’ve been giving her,” Dick remarked, jerking the Outlaw’s bared teeth away from dangerous proximity to the Fawn’s flank.
“And it’s disgraceful the way I’ve neglected Duddy and Fuddy,” Paula said. “I’ve kept their feed down like a miser, but they’re a lively handful just the same.”
Dick heard her idly, but within forty-eight hours he was to remember with hurt what she had said.
They continued on till the crunch of the rock-crusher died away, penetrated a belt of woodland, crossed a tiny divide where the afternoon sunshine was wine-colored by the manzanita and rose-colored by madronos, and dipped down through a young planting of eucalyptus to the Little Meadow. But before they reached it, they dismounted and tied their horses. Dick took the .22 automatic rifle from his saddle-holster, and with Paula advanced softly to a clump of redwoods on the edge of the meadow. They disposed themselves in the shade and gazed out across the meadow to the steep slope of hill that came down to it a hundred and fifty yards away.
“There they are—three—four of them,” Paula whispered, as her keen eyes picked the squirrels out amongst the young grain.