“How yuh feelin’?” he asked Bemis, adding with a touch of sarcasm in his voice, “I hear yuh got a reg’lar professional sawbones to look after yuh.”
“He acts like he knew what he was about,” returned Bemis briefly. “How yuh goin’ to get me home?”
“I’ve sent Butch an’ Flint after the wagon,” explained Lynch. “They’ll hustle all they can.”
“Did you catch sight of the rustlers?” asked Stratton suddenly.
The foreman flashed him a sudden not overfriendly glance.
“No,” he returned curtly, and turning on his heel led his horse over to where the others had gathered in the shadow of a rocky butte.
It was nearly an hour before the lumbering farm-wagon appeared. During the interval Buck sat beside the wounded man, smoking and exchanging occasional brief comments with Bud, who stayed close by. One or two of the others strolled up to ask about Bemis, but for the most part they remained in their 65 little group, the intermittent glow of their cigarettes flickering in the darkness and the constant low murmur of their conversation wafted indistinguishably across the intervening space.
Their behavior piqued Buck’s curiosity tremendously. What were they talking about so continually? Where had the outlaws gone, and why hadn’t they been pursued further? Had the whole pursuit been merely in the nature of a bluff? And if so, whom had it been intended to deceive? These and a score of other questions passed through his mind as he sat there waiting, but when the dull rumble of the wagon started them all into activity, he had not succeeded in finding any really plausible answers.
The return trip was necessarily slow, and dawn was just breaking as they forded the creek and drove up to the bunk-house. They had barely come to a standstill when, to Buck’s surprise, the slim figure of Mary Thorne, bare-headed and clad in riding-clothes, appeared suddenly around the corner of the ranch-house and came swiftly toward them.
“Pedro told me,” she said briefly, pausing beside the wagon. “How is he?”