While Garth lingered at the door, the other men, crowding closer to the man at the table, grew into a charmed circle about him, a picturesque congregation in their underclothes of grey and white and washed out pinks and blues. Within five minutes after the defeat of Big Bill every man of them was either making or smoking a cigarette with all thought of their tumbled bunks forgotten. There were many demands for first hand information concerning wild niggers and pyramids and the ways of the jungle; there were many exclamations testifying in mild profanity to startled wonderment. At last Garth, turning away, called out,
"I say, Wayne, you mustn't forget it's getting late. There's a big day's work for the boys to-morrow."
"This is my home coming celebration, Garth," Wayne laughed back at him. "Hang the work, man. We'll have a half holiday to-morrow if the whole outfit goes to pot."
Anything further Garth had to remark he said angrily to himself as he strode away to the range house. And Wayne, with no further interruption, explained how the games ran at Monte Carlo. Finally, since there was nothing in the world he had learned to love as he loved horses, he came to speak of the Derby.
"The greatest race in the world," he cried, slapping his thigh enthusiastically. "Just because it's the straightest and the stakes are right and the horses are as beautiful as women and as swift as lightning!"
One o'clock came and they were talking horses and racing, the men now upon common ground, their eyes bright with the tale retold of the
CHAPTER VI
THE PROMISE OF LITTLE SAXON
Rose-bud, the unlovely Chinese cook, made the dawn hideous in the range house with his pots and pans and rattling stove lids. To him appeared Red Reckless, touseled and sleepy eyed looking to the astonished oriental's vision like an avenging demon, threatening to choke him to death with his own pigtail and to roast him crisp and brown him in his own oven if he didn't conduct himself with less noise in his pastime of breakfast getting.