The cowman accepted this as conclusive. But when, a little later, Ashton met Gowan at the supper table he was rendered uneasy by the cold glint in the puncher’s gray eyes. As nothing was said about the postmaster’s receipt, he could conjecture no reason for the look other than that Gowan was planning to render him ridiculous with some cowboy trick.
Isobel had assured him with utmost confidence that the testing of his horsemanship by means of Rocket had been intended only as a practical joke, and that Gowan would never have permitted him to mount the horse had he considered it at all dangerous. Yet the fellow might next undertake jokes containing no element of physical peril and consequently all the more humiliating unless evaded.
In apprehension of this, the tenderfoot lay awake 103 most of that night and fully half of the next. His watch was fruitless. Each night Gowan and the other men left him strictly alone in his far dark corner of the bunkhouse. In the daytime the puncher was studiously polite to him during the few hours that he was not off on the range.
The third evening, after supper, Gowan handed Isobel the horny, half-flattened rattles of an unusually large rattlesnake.
“What is it? Do you wish me to guess his length?” she asked, evidently surprised that he should fetch her so commonplace an object. “I make it four feet.”
“You’re three inches short,” he replied.
“Well, what about it?” she inquired.
“Nothing––only I just happened to get him up near the bunkhouse, Miss Chuckie. Thought I’d tell you, in case he has a mate around.”
“We must all look sharp. You, too, Mr. Ashton. They are more apt to strike without warning, this time of year.”
“I know,” remarked Ashton. “It’s before they cast their old skin, and it makes them blind.”