"Don't worry about Mary," Cockney broke in harshly. "Since Stamford and the Journal let us down in the matter of help, we're getting accustomed to doing our work ourselves. At any rate we haven't fallen to depending on our guests. Mary, where's the large pair of wire-cutters?"
His wife loaded herself with dirty dishes and started for the kitchen. The Professor leaped to her assistance.
"I wouldn't disturb myself so much if I were you," said Cockney in an even tone, so full of meaning that the Professor turned aside through the stair door without a word.
"We'll have to go now." Isabel started to follow her brother. "The ford's perfectly safe, Mr. Stamford," she threw over her shoulder. "Anyway I can swim."
"What can't you do? But you'd drown trying to save that blundering brother of yours."
"But he's a perfectly nice brother, don't you think?"
"No," he snapped. "I don't. I wanted you to come for a ride."
"Thank you," she called back from the stair door. "My next engagement's with Dakota, I believe."
When the buckboard had disappeared round the lower end of the corrals on the way to the ford, Stamford, more than a little uncertain of the wisdom of it, made for the stables in search of some light on the previous night's scene. But no one was about, and he saddled Hobbles and rode for an hour.
As he turned back, a solitary mess-wagon came into sight far along the eastern trail. Stamford's thoughts flew back to the cattle shipping at Dunmore Junction, when the same mess-wagon, at Dakota's command, drifted away into the lonesome northern prairie, leaving a half-dozen of its companions rattling off down the trail for a night in Medicine Hat.