“It worked fine,” Bud whispered to him jubilantly, when they were alone together for a few minutes after supper. “Did yuh see him hangin’ around me this afternoon? He was grouchin’ around and pretendin’ to be mad because he’d let yuh go to town this mornin’ just to mail a letter to some fool girl.”
“Of course I pulled the baby stare an’ told him I 134 didn’t see no letter to no girl. Yuh sure didn’t mail one while I was with yuh, I says.
“‘Didn’t mail no letter at all?’ he wants to know, scowlin’.”
“‘Sure,’ I says. ‘Only it went to Jim Hardenberg over to Perilla. I seen him hand it to old Pop Daggett, who was peevish as a wet hen ’cause he couldn’t find out nothin’ about what was in it, ’count of Buck hangin’ around till it got on the train. That’s the only letter I seen.’
“He didn’t have no more to say, but walked off, scowlin’ fierce. I’ll bet yuh my new Stetson to a two-bit piece, Buck, he rides in to town mighty quick to find out what Pop knows about it.”
Stratton did not take him up, for it had already occurred to him that such a move on Lynch’s part was almost certain. As a matter of fact the foreman did leave the ranch early the next morning, driving a pair of blacks harnessed to the buckboard. Buck and Jessup were both surprised at this unwonted method of locomotion, which usually indicated a passenger to be brought back, or, more rarely, a piece of freight or express, too large or heavy to be carried on horseback, yet not bulky enough for the lumbering freight-wagon.
“An’ if it was freight, he’d have sent one of us,” commented Bud, as they saddled up preparatory to resuming operations on the fences. “Still an’ all, 135 I reckon he wants to see Pop himself and get a line on what that old he-gossip knows. He’ll have his ear full, all right,” he finished in a tone of vindictive satisfaction.
To make up for the day before, the whole gang took life very easily, and knocked off work rather earlier than usual. They had loafed ten or fifteen minutes in the bunk-house and were straggling up the slope in answer to Pedro’s summons to dinner when, with a clatter of hoofs, the blacks whirled through the further gate and galloped toward the house.
Buck, among the others, glanced curiously in that direction and observed with much interest that a woman occupied the front seat of the buckboard with Tex, while a young man and two small trunks more than filled the rear.
“Some dame!” he heard Bud mutter under his breath.