“It beats the devil—for a fac’.” He looked helplessly over his shoulder. The man was beyond sight and sound. “If he hadn’t said he was goin’ for Doc and belonged to the X Y Z,” he pondered. He was swearing because he could not think of a way out of the maze of contradiction. He was so seldom at a loss, this braggadocio Jim. “Well, I reckon I won’t get any he’p a moonin’ here less’n I wait here till that son-of-a-gun comes back from seein’ Doc. Lord, I’d have to camp out all night. Guess I’ll be a movin’ on. But I’m plumb a-foot for an idee as to how that idjit got here from the X Y Z.”
He shrugged his shoulders and picked up the fallen bridle-rein. He kept on straight ahead, and it was well for him that he did so. It was not the last of the affair. The old, prosaic trail seemed fairly bristling with ghostly visitants that night. He had gone but a scant quarter-mile when he met with a second horseman, and this time he would have sworn on oath that the man had not been on the forward trail as long as he should have been to be seen in the starlight. Jim was not dozing now and he knew what he was about. The fellow struck the trail from across country and from the direction of Williston’s home cattle sheds.
“The devil!” he muttered, and this time he was in deep and terrible earnest.
“Hullo!” the fellow accosted him, genially.
“Too damned pleasant—the whole bunch of em,” found quick lodgment in Jim’s active brain. Aloud, he responded with answering good-nature, “Hullo!”
“Where ye goin’?” asked the other, as if in no particular haste to part company. If he had met with a surprise, he carried it off well.
“Home. Been to town.” Jim was on tenter hooks to be off.
“Belong to the Three Bars, don’t you?”
“Yep.”
“Thought so. Well, good luck to you.”