Buck promised, and swung himself stiffly into the saddle. As he and Bud rode briskly down the slope, he turned and glanced back for an instant. Miss Manning stood where they had left her, handkerchief fluttering from her upraised hand, but Stratton scarcely saw her. His gaze swept the front of the ranch-house, scrutinizing each gaping, empty window and the deserted porch. Finally, with a faint sigh and a little shrug of his shoulders, he mentally dismissed the past and fell to considering the future.
There was a good deal yet to be talked over and decided, and when he had briefly detailed to Bud the various happenings he was still ignorant of, Buck went on to outline his plans.
“There are several things I want to look into, and to do it I’ve got to be on the loose,” he explained. “At the same time I don’t want Lynch to get the idea I’m snooping around. What sort of a fellow is this Tenny, over at the Rocking-R?”
“He’s white,” returned Bud promptly. “No squarer ranch-boss around the country. I’d of gone there instead of the Shoe-Bar, only they was full up. What was yuh thinkin’ of—bracin’ him for a job?”
“Not exactly, though I’d like Lynch to think I’d been taken on there. Do you suppose, if I put Tenny wise to what I was after, that he’d let me have a cayuse and pack-horse, and stake me to enough grub 182 to keep me a week or two in the mountains back of the Shoe-Bar?”
“He might, especially when he knows you’re buckin’ Tex; he never was much in love with Lynch.” Jessup paused, eyeing his companion curiously. “Say, Buck,” he went on quickly, “What makes yuh so keen about this, anyhow? Yuh ain’t no deputy sheriff, or anythin’ like that, are yuh?”
For a moment Stratton was taken aback by the unexpectedness of the question. He had come to regard Jessup and himself so completely at one in their desire to penetrate the mystery of Lynch’s shady doings that it had never occurred to him that his intense absorption in the situation might strike Bud as peculiar. It was one thing to behave as Bud was doing, especially as he frankly had the interest of Mary Thorne at heart, and quite another to throw up a job and plan to carry on an unproductive investigation from a theoretical desire to bring to justice a crooked foreman whom he had never seen until a few weeks ago.
“Why, of course not,” parried Buck. “What gave you that notion?”
“I dunno exactly. I s’pose mebbe it’s the way you’re plannin’ to give yore time to it without pay or nothin’. There won’t be a darn cent in it for yuh, even if yuh do land Tex in the pen.” 183
“I know that,” and Buck smiled; “but I’m a stubborn cuss when I get started on anything. Besides, I love Tex Lynch well enough to want to see him get every mite that’s comin’ to him. I’ve got a little money saved up, and I’ll get more fun spending it this way than any other I can think of.”