"Pink Eye is as vicious on occasion as he is powerful," said Mary. "Cockney doesn't ride him much, but when he does I know there's a hard trip ahead."
That evening a strange silence brooded over the valley; even the coyotes failed to greet the falling darkness. The Professor played a little, but his fingers were lifeless, and, after a few bars, he closed the piano and pulled his chair before the door to stare into the night. The women were busy with needlework; Stamford smoked and thought.
Cockney's repeated absences, always coinciding with those of Dakota and the others, puzzled him. His instincts refused still to link the big rancher with the subterranean work in which Stamford suspected the cowboys were engaged, but—— Stamford closed his lips tight; he was there to prove Cockney's innocence in the teeth of suspicion.
When he went to his room. Imp shivered in at his heels and curled up on the foot of the bed. Once during the night Stamford was awakened by the dog's muffled bark, and against the window he could see the ears pointing stiffly out into the night. Far away a big pack of coyotes yelped, and, half-asleep, Stamford followed their rapid passage along the crest of the cliff across the river. Yelps and barks and howls burst out in a score of places over the prairie. Stamford reached down to rub Imp's ears and sank to sleep.
It was three days before Cockney returned. They were at the dinner table when they saw him ride up to the stables, unsaddle, rub Pink Eye down with straw, and lead him away to the lower corral.
"Any of the boys back yet?" he asked, as he joined them.
When they told him only the cookie was about the place:
"Better keep quiet about where I've been. Dakota's sensitive on the dogie question. Every year we fight about it. He considers dogies the blight of the West—that they lack more in stamina and size than they make up in quality of beef. My idea is to improve the quality, not only the bulk."
Stamford was watching him narrowly. That he was weary and hungry was evident, and about his talk was an abstraction that belied the seriousness of his subject.
"You have a few more ideas about ranching than you care to show," he said.