Fire Begets Hot Air
Late one afternoon three months after Eileen’s departure for the coast, just as the dark was beginning to come down and as Phil was turning off the main road by the trail leading to the ranch, he noticed a man in sheepskin chaps making for the trees a hundred yards behind the farmhouse. He stopped his horse and watched him quietly, for there was something in the fellow’s gait that seemed familiar to him. The man mounted a horse among the trees, came out boldly, cantered through the orchard on to the main road and away.
The spring thaw was on, mud was everywhere, and the stranger’s beast ambled away with the silence of a ghost.
Phil did not know what to make of it, so he questioned Jim on the subject.
“Were any of that Redmans gang in seeing you?” he asked.
“Seeing me? Good land, no! Why?”
“Oh, I saw what looked like one of them getting on his horse among the trees at the back there, and riding away.”
“Uhm!” said Jim, rubbing his chin.
“I thought it was Skookum, but I couldn’t be quite sure.
“I wonder what the devil he could be up to, so far from home?”