Ellis watched him lovingly a minute or two then, lighting his pipe, he reentered the detachment.
CHAPTER VIII
He was a dirty, aged man, who to his bottle clung,
And ever and anon did curie in some queer foreign tongue,
The tale he told was passing strange, yet pitiful, withal—
Of the lonely, care-fraught, troublous life
He lived from Fall to Fall.
—The Old Nester
An uneventful hour and a half’s ride next morning brought Benton within sight of Tucker’s homestead at Fish Creek. Leaving the main trail, he struck into an old cow-track, which short cut wound its way through the thick brush on the west side of the latter’s pasture, emerging from which, into a clear open space, he found the gate that he sought.
What little feed there had been inside the few fenced-in acres was cropped as close as if sheep had been herded there, and a bunch of horses and a few gaunt cows wandered disconsolately hither and thither, roaming the fence round and groping through the wire strands at the nourishment that lay just beyond their reach. It was a pitiful sight and Ellis, with his love for animals, felt a spasm of anger pass through him as he noticed bad festering barbed-wire scratches on more than one of the poor hungry brutes.
“Th’ cursed, scared old fool,” he muttered savagely. “I reckon he’s got reason to be, though, if that whisper o’ Shorty’s is straight goods.”
He rode slowly across the parched, dusty ground and, fording the creek, passed through the gate at the opposite end. Circling around the stables and corrals, he dismounted outside the weather-beaten shack in which the old man passed his lonely life. Dropping the buckskin’s lines, the Sergeant climbed up the broken steps and shoved his way in through the half-opened door.
With an oath he reeled back and his hand streaked like lightning to his hip. For a second or two he remained perfectly motionless then, a grim smile slowly relaxing his features, he dropped his hand and gazed silently at the strange scene that met his eyes.
He beheld an under-sized, grizzled-bearded old man about sixty who, with the vacuous smile of the partially intoxicated, was leveling a rifle at him with shaking hands. He was seated in an arm-chair, at a rough table, that was littered with dirty crockery and cooking utensils. An empty glass was in front of him.
“Saku bona, N’kos,” greeted Ellis mockingly.