The scout halted abruptly. Through the timber behind him and the Laramie man came a rider at speed, his horse lathered and blowing. The man in the saddle was long and lean; his thin, hatchet-like face was full of excitement. As he threw himself from his horse, the animal staggered drunkenly with feet wide apart.
“Suffering horn toads!” exclaimed the Laramie man, passing his gaze from the nearly spent horse to the excited newcomer. “From the looks of your horse, neighbor, I reckon you only hit an occasional high place for a good distance back.”
“We flew,” grinned the man, “but we had ter. Ain’t forgot me, have ye?”
He looked at Wild Bill ingratiatingly.
“Dot and carry one!” cried Wild Bill, recognizing the newcomer suddenly. “Can this be Sim Pierce, the gent I came company front with in Hackamore? Sim Pierce, scion of the Pierces of San Antone?”
“Aw’ shucks!” said Sim Pierce deprecatingly, drawing a bar of chewing from his hip pocket, and loading himself with one corner of it.
Returning the tobacco to his pocket, he dropped down on the bench on which the pards were sitting, chewed wide and reflectively for a few moments, and hooked up one knee between his hands.
“Sim,” remarked Wild Bill, after the silence had begun to grow embarrassing, “did you ride your caballo into a quiver just to come here and show Buffalo Bill and me how you handle a plug of Cowboy’s Pride?”
“Waal, not so you kin notice,” answered Sim. “I was glad I seen ye out hyer by yerselves. It gives me a chanst ter onbosom myself without lettin’ the Perrys savvy.”
“Perrys! Only one Perry and two Dunbars live in that house now.”