“It’s worse than the other!” he cried.
They were silent a moment. Then Carhart said, “Well—keep at it, Harry. I may look you up again after a little.”
He walked over to his horse, mounted, nodded a good-by, and cantered back toward the camp. Scribner watched him ride off, then soberly turned and prepared to pack up and move on westward. He was thinking, as he gave the necessary orders, how much this little visit meant. The chief would have come only with matters at a bad pass.
Over a range of low waste hills, through a village of prairie-dogs,—and he fired humorously at them with his revolver as they sat on their mounds, and chuckled when they popped down out of sight,—across a plain studded from horizon to horizon with the bleached bones and skulls of thousands of buffaloes, past the camp and the grade where the men of the first division were at work, Paul Carhart rode, until, finally, the main camp and the trains and wagons came into view.
It was supper-time. The red, spent sun hung low in the west; the parched earth was awaiting the night breeze. Cantering easily on, Carhart soon reached the grade, and turned in toward the tents. The endless quiet of the desert gave place to an odd, tense quiet in the camp. The groups of laborers, standing or lying motionless, ceasing their low, excited talk as he passed; the lowered eyes, the circle of Mexicans standing about the mules, the want of the relaxation and animal good-nature that should follow the night whistle: these signs were plain as print to his eyes and his senses.
He dismounted, walked rapidly to the headquarters tent, and found the two Vandervelts in anxious conversation. He had never observed so sharply the contrast between the brothers. The younger was smooth shaven, slender, with brown hair, and frank blue eyes that were dreamy at times; he would have looked the poet were it not for a square forehead, a straight, incisive mouth, and a chin as uncompromising as the forehead. There was in his face the promise of great capacity for work, dominated by a sympathetic imagination. The face of his brother was another story; some of the stronger qualities were there, but they were not tempered with the gentler. His stocky frame, his strong neck, the deep lines about his mouth, even the set of his cropped gray mustache, spoke of dogged, unimaginative persistence.
Evidently they were not in agreement. Both started at the sight of their chief—the younger brother with a frank expression of relief.
Carhart threw off his hat and gauntlet gloves, took his seat at the table, and looked from one to the other.
The elder brother nodded curtly. “Go ahead, Gus,” he said. “Give Paul your view of it.”