“So I observed,” said Transley. “Well, it’s a big valley, and if they’re satisfied to stay where they are there should be enough for both. If they’re not—”
“If they’re not, what?” demanded Linder.
“You heard what Y.D. said. He said, ‘Cut it, spite o’ hell an’ high water,’ and I always obey orders.”
They wound down the hillside until they came to the stream, the horses quickening their pace with the smell of water in their eager nostrils. It was a good ford, broad and shallow, with the typical boulder bottom of the mountain stream. The horses crowded into it, drinking greedily with a sort of droning noise caused by the bits in their mouths. When they had satisfied their thirst they raised their heads, stretched their noses far out and champed wide-mouthed upon their bits.
After a pause in the stream they drew out on the farther bank, where were open spaces among cottonwood trees, and Transley indicated that this would be their camping ground. Already smoke was issuing from the chuck wagon, and in a few minutes the men’s sleeping tent and the two stable tents were flashing back the afternoon sun. They carried no eating tent; instead of that an eating wagon was backed up against the chuck wagon, and the men were served in it. They had not paused for a midday meal; the cook had provided sandwiches of bread and roast beef to dull the edge of their appetite, and now all were keen to fall to as soon as the welcome clanging of the plow-colter which hung from the end of the chuck wagon should give the signal.
Presently this clanging filled the evening air with sweet music, and the men filed with long, slouchy tread into the eating wagon. The table ran down the centre, with bench seats at either side. The cook, properly gauging the men’s appetites, had not taken time to prepare meat and potatoes, but on the table were ample basins of graniteware filled with beans and bread and stewed prunes and canned tomatoes, pitchers of syrup and condensed milk, tins with marmalade and jam, and plates with butter sadly suffering from the summer heat. The cook filled their granite cups with hot tea from a granite pitcher, and when the cups were empty filled them again and again. And when the tables were partly cleared he brought out deep pies filled with raisins and with evaporated apples and a thick cake from which the men cut hunks as generous as their appetite suggested. Transley had learned, what women are said to have learned long ago, that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and the cook had carte blanche. Not a man who ate at Transley’s table but would have spilt his blood for the boss or for the honor of the gang.
The meal was nearing its end when through a window Linder’s eye caught sight of a man on horseback rapidly approaching. “Visitors, Transley,” he was able to say before the rider pulled up at the open door of the covered wagon.
He was such a rider as may still be seen in those last depths of the ranching country where wheels have not entirely crowded Romance off of horseback. Spare and well-knit, his figure had a suggestion of slightness which the scales would have belied. His face, keen and clean-shaven, was brown as the August hills, and above it his broad hat sat in the careless dignity affected by the gentlemen of the plains. His leather coat afforded protection from the heat of day and from the cold of night.
“Good evening, men,” he said, courteously. “Don’t let me disturb your meal. Afterwards perhaps I can have a word with the boss.”
“That’s me,” said Transley, rising.