I went to sniff the morning, and at the door found Curly's horse, loaded with an antelope lashed across the saddle.
"I shot you some meat fo' yo' camp," said Curly, throwing coffee into the boiling pot. "Now let's have breakfast."
I went out and caught some eggs, then we had breakfast.
CHAPTER VII
AT THE SIGN OF RYAN'S HAND
At the time of Curly's visit I was breaking in a bunch of fool ponies, and along in August sold them to the Lawson Cattle Company. Their Flying W. Outfit was forming up just then for the fall round-up, so by way of swift delivery I took my ponies down by rail to Lordsburgh. Their camp was beside the stock-yard, and the little old cow town was surely alive with their cowboys, stamping new boots around to get them used, shooting off their guns to show how good they felt, filling up with chocolate creams and pickles to while the time between meals, sampling the whisky, the games, and the druggist's sure-thing medicines, or racing ponies for trial along the street.
Now I reckon that the sight and smell of a horse comes more natural to me than anything else on earth, while the very dust from a horse race gets into my blood, and I can't come near the course without my head getting rattled. But from the first whiff of that town I caught the scent of something going wrong, for most of the stock-yard was full of cattle branded with a cross, and the Holy Cross vaqueros were loading them into a train. Moreover, by many a sign I gathered fact on fact, that this delivery of Balshannon's cattle was out of the way of business, not a shipment of beef to the market, but a sale of breeding-stock, which meant nothing short of ruin. I strayed through that town feeling sick, refusing to drink with the punchers, or talk cow with the cattlemen, or take any interest in life. At the post office I met up with Jim, face to face, and he tried to pass by short-sighted.
"Boy," said I, as I grabbed him, "why for air you shamed?"
"Leave me go," he snarled.