"Down south somewhere—Irvine way, I think they said, in search of strays."
"O-oh!"
She stopped on her way to the kitchen and turned into her bedroom.
Stamford became suddenly aware of Bean Slade's lanky, blue-aproned figure lolling in the kitchen doorway.
"Yer shure lucky," said Bean, "gettin' the missus to cook yer meals, 'stead o' cookie. Mebbe we'll miss yu—fer the meals. Not to say cookie here ain't a real shuff when he likes, but he don't like nowhar 'ceptin' here at the ranch-house. Look at that, now!" He turned to watch the cook relentlessly pursue a stray fly that had managed to squirm through the screen door at the back, where a great number of its fellows, attracted by the odour and heat, were jealously prying about for entrance. "One measly li'l insec' gi's him the pip here; out at the cook-house he can sarve flies twenty-seven different ways without overlappin'. But lookee here, Mr. Stamford"—he leaned into the room and spoke in a whisper—"don't yu go fer to tell all yu heard us croakin' out there. The boss mightn't like it."
Stamford felt a glow of elation that Bean, in his innocence, had furnished him with a clue, but before he could follow it up, Mary Aikens came thoughtfully back and went about her work. Bean slunk back into the kitchen and nosed about for his own special fly.
Mary was in the act of reaching to a cupboard, when her hand stopped and she turned to the window. An exciting sense of nervousness and unrest about the ranch made Stamford's heart leap. He moved restlessly in his chair.
"Listen!"
The dull thud of hoofs and the rattle of wheels drew them both to the door. A buckboard was coming drunkenly down the eastern trail, its horses, under the direction of an inexpert—or drunken—driver, uncertain of what was expected of them. The smallest deviation from the beaten track meant that one horse was mounting the ridge and the other the prairie at the side, the wheels following them in jerks from the deep ruts in the black loam worn by the unanimous track of every previous vehicle and horse.