“W’a’s matter?” murmured Slim, blinking at the lamp.
“Nothing. I was dreaming. What the devil are you doing in that bunk?”
McCabe appeared to rouse himself with an effort and partly sat up, yawning prodigiously.
“It was hot in my own, so I come over here to get the air from the window,” he mumbled. “What’s the idea of waking a guy up in the middle of the night?”
Buck did not answer for a moment but, stepping back, trod as if by accident on the end of his trailing blanket. As he intended, the movement sent his holster and belt tumbling to the floor, and with perfect naturalness he stooped to pick them up. When he straightened, his face betrayed nothing of the grim satisfaction he felt at having proved his point. The bit of steel was a hunting-knife with a seven-inch blade, sharp as a razor, and with a distinctive stag-horn handle, which Tex Lynch had used only a few evenings before to remove the skin from a coyote he had brought down. 122
“Sorry, but I was dreaming,” drawled Stratton. “No harm done, though, is there? You ain’t likely to stay awake long.”
Without further comment he blew out the light and crawled into bed again. He found no difficulty now in keeping awake for the remainder of the night; there was too much to think about and decide. Now that he had measured the lengths to which Lynch seemed willing to go, he realized that a continuance of present conditions was impossible. An exact repetition of this particular attempt was unlikely, but there were plenty of variations against which no single individual could hope to guard. He must bring things to a head at once, either by quitting the ranch, by playing the important card of his own identity he had so far held back, or else by finding some other way of tying Lynch’s hands effectually. He was equally reluctant to take either of the two former steps, and so it pleased him greatly when at last he began to see his way toward working things out in another fashion.
“I’m blessed if that won’t put a spoke in his wheel,” he thought jubilantly, considering details. “He won’t dare to touch me.”
When dawn came filtering through the windows, and one thing after another slowly emerged from the obscurity, Buck’s eyes swiftly sought the floor below Bud’s bunk. But though McCabe lay there snoring loudly, the knife had disappeared. 123
Though outwardly everything seemed normal, Buck noticed a slight restlessness and laxing tension about the men that morning. There was delay in getting to work, which might have been accounted for by the cessation of one job and the starting of another. But knowing what he did, Stratton felt that the flat failure of their plot had much to do with it.