“Come up to the cabin for the night,” Asher said, with a plainsman’s courtesy.
“Thank you, no. Hope to see you again nearer to the Lord’s ground; losin’ game here. Good-by.” 76
Asher did not look like a disappointed man when he reached the Sunflower Inn.
“Best news in the world,” he declared when Virginia related what had happened in the cabin that afternoon. “A man who goes prospecting around the Kansas prairies doesn’t discourage the poor cuss he pities; he tries to encourage the wretch to hold on to land he wouldn’t have himself. Listen to me, Virgie. That man has his eye on Grass River right now. I know his breed.”
Meanwhile the early dusk found Champers and Smith approaching Shirley’s premises.
“I don’t know about Aydelot,” Champers declared as they lariated their ponies beyond the corral. “He’s one of the clear-eyed fellows who sees a good thing about as soon as you sight it yourself, and then he turns clam and leach and you won’t move him nor get nothin’ out of him, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Yes, I know that. I mean, you say he does?” Smith seemed too preoccupied to follow his own words, but Champers followed Smith shrewdly enough.
They made a hasty but careful examination of the premises, keeping wide of the cabin where the sick man lay.
“He’s got three horses in there. He’s well fixed,” Champers declared, peering into the stable, where it was too dark to discover that the third horse was Dr. Carey’s. “Let’s hike off for some deserted shack for the night and get an early start for the Crossing in the morning. Easy trick, this, gettin’ in and out of here unseen. And it’s one of the best claims on Grass River.”
“Couldn’t we slip into the cabin?” Smith asked in a half whisper. “If he’s too sick”—Something in the 77 man’s face made it look diabolical in the fading twilight, and he seemed about to start toward the house.