Tresler shook his head, and tried the metal screw cap.
“No,” he replied shortly.
Then he leant over the water and carefully set the bottle floating, pushing it out as far as possible with his foot while he supported himself by the overhanging bough of a tree. Then he stood watching it carried slowly amid-stream. Presently the improvised craft darted out with a rush into the current, and swept onward with the main flow of the water. Then he returned and remounted his impatient mare.
“That,” he said, as they rode on, “is a message. Fyles’s men are down the river spying out the land, and, incidentally, waiting to hear from me. The message I’ve sent them is a request for assistance at Willow Bluff. I have given them sound reason, which Fyles will understand.”
Arizona displayed considerable astonishment, which found expression in a deprecating avowal.
“Say, I guess I’m too much o’ the old hand. I didn’t jest think o’ that.”
It was all he vouchsafed, but it said a great deal. And the thin face and wild eyes said more.
Now they rode on in silence, while they followed the wood-lined trail along the river. The shade was delightful, and the trail sufficiently sandy to muffle the sound of the horses’ hoofs and so leave the silence unbroken. There was a faint hum from the insects that haunted the river, but it was drowsy, soft, and only emphasized the perfect sylvan solitude. After a while the trail left the river and gently inclined up to the prairie level. Then the bush broke and became scattered into small bluffs, and a sniff of the bracing air of the plains brushed away the last odor of the redolent glades they were leaving.
It was here that Arizona roused himself. He was of the prairie, belonging to the prairie. The woodlands depressed him, but the prairie made him expansive.