Daggett took a swift step or two across the sagging porch, his face grown oddly serious. “Wal, I wouldn’t try the Shoe-Bar, nohow. There’s the Rockin’-R. They’re short a man or two. Yuh go see Jim Tenny an’ tell him—”
“What’s the matter with the Shoe-Bar?” persisted Buck.
Pop’s glance avoided Stratton’s. “Yuh—wouldn’t like it,” he mumbled, glancing down the trail. “It—it ain’t like it was in Joe’s time. That there Tex Lynch—he—he don’t get on with the boys.”
“Who’s he? The foreman?”
“Yeah. Beauty Lynch, some calls him ’count uh his looks. I ain’t denyin’ he’s han’some, with them black eyes an’ red cheeks uh his, but somethin’ queer—Like I said, there ain’t nobody stays long at the Shoe-Bar. Yuh take my advice, Buck, an’ try the Rockin’-R. They’s a nice bunch there.”
Buck swung himself easily into the saddle; “I’ll think about it,” he smiled, gathering up the reins. “Well, so-long; see you in a day or so, anyway. Thanks for helping me out, old-timer.”
He loosened the reins, and the roan took the trail at a canter. Well beyond the last adobe house, Stratton glanced back to see old Pop Daggett still standing on 23 the store porch and staring after him. Buck flung up one arm in a careless gesture of farewell; then a gentle downward slope in the prairie carried him out of sight of the little settlement.
“Acts to me like he was holding back something,” he thought as he rode briskly on through the wide, rolling solitudes. “Now, I wonder what sort of a guy is this Tex Lynch, and what’s going on at the Shoe-Bar that an old he-gossip like Pop Daggett is afraid to talk about?”