"A couple of hours," repeated Daniels, and ground his knuckles across his forehead. "A couple of hours!"
He raised his glass with a jerky motion and downed the contents; the chaser stood disregarded before him and O'Brien regarded his patron with an eye of admiration.
"You long for these parts?" he asked.
"No, I'm strange to this range. Riding up north pretty soon, if I can get someone to tell me the lay of the land. D'you know it?"
"Never been further north than Brownsville."
"Couldn't name me someone that's travelled about, I s'pose?"
"Old Gary Peters knows every rock within three day's riding. He keeps the blacksmith shop across the way."
"So? Thanks; I'll look him up."
Buck Daniels found the blacksmith seated on a box before his place of business; it was a slack time for Gary Peters and he consoled himself for idleness by chewing the stem of an unlighted corn-cob, whose bowl was upside down. His head was pulled down and forward as if by the weight of his prodigious sandy moustache, and he regarded a vague horizon with misty eyes.
"Seen you comin' out of O'Brien's," said the blacksmith, as Buck took possession of a nearby box. "What's the news?"