She tilted her cantin to him, and began to laugh.
“But it has come my way!” she exulted. “O Kit, I can’t keep it a minute, Kit––we did find that sheepskin!”
“What? A sheepskin?” He had no recollection of a lost sheepskin.
“Yes, Cap Pike and I! In the bottom of an old chest of daddy’s! We’re all but crazy because it came just when we were planning to give up the ranch if we had to, and now that you are here––!” her sentence ended in a happy sigh of utter content.
“Sure, now that I’m here,” he assented amicably, “we’ll stop all that moving business––pronto. That is if we live to get to water. What do you know about any?”
“Two barrels waiting for you, and Cap rustling firewood, but I heard the wagon, and–––”
“Sure,” he assented again. “Into the saddle with you and we’ll get there. The folks are all right, but the cayuses–––”
A light began to blaze on the level above, and the mules, smelling water, broke into a momentary trot and were herded ahead of the two who followed more slowly, and very close together.
Cap Pike left the fire to stand guard over the water barrels and shoo the mules away.
“Look who’s here?” he called waving his hat in salute. “The patriots of Sonora have nothing on you when it comes to making collections on their native heath! I left you a poor devil with a runt of a burro, a cripple, and an Indian kid, and you’ve bloomed out into a bloated aristocrat with a batch of high-class army mules. And say, you’re just in time, and you don’t know it! We’re in at last, by Je-rusalem, we’re in!”