“Say––you––”
But Bill wanted no thanks or explanations.
“We’re seein’ to them things––us, an’ that all-fired lazy slob, Sunny Oak. Ther’ won’t be no harm––” He flicked the restive mare, which bounded off with the spring of a gazelle. “Ease your hand to her,” he called out, so as to drown Scipio’s further protestations of gratitude, “ease your hand, you blamed little fule. That’s it. Now let her go.”
And the mare raced off in a cloud of dust.
CHAPTER V
HUSBAND AND LOVER
Where all the trail-wise men of Suffering Creek and the district had failed, Scipio, the incompetent, succeeded. Such was the ironical pleasure of the jade Fortune. Scipio had not the vaguest idea of whither his quest would lead him. He had no ideas on the subject at all. Only had he his fixed purpose hard in his mind, and, like a loadstone, it drew him unerringly to his goal.
There was something absolutely ludicrous in the manner of his search. But fortunately there are few ready to laugh at disaster. Thus it was that wherever he went, wherever he paused amongst his fellows in search of information he was received perfectly seriously, even when he told the object of his search, and the story of its reason.