“Well, somebody did. I tell you, there’s a dirty spy around here.”
“Marsh Hartwell!”
The old lady came closer and put a hand on his arm, but he did not look at her.
“Perhaps there is a spy, Marsh,” she said softly. “There are many people in Lo Lo Valley. We don’t know them all as well as we know each other. And knowing each other so well, after all these years, Marsh, are we the only ones capable of raising a—a spy?”
He looked down at her. There were tears in her old eyes and her lips trembled in spite of the forced smile. Then she turned away and went back through the doorway. He stared after her for along time, before he turned and went back to the open front door, where he scowled out into the night.
There was no relaxation, no admission that he might be wrong in his estimate of Jack. But between his lips came a soft exclamation, which had something to do with “a —— fool,” but only Marsh Hartwell knew whom he meant.
A long train of cattle-cars creaked through the hills, heading for the eastern markets. Back in the rattling old caboose, a number of cowboys sat around a table under a swaying lamp and tried to kill time at poker.
They were the men in charge of the stock, and had found, to their sorrow, that a swaying, creaking, jerking caboose was no place for a cowboy to sleep. They growled at each other and swore roundly, when the caboose swayed around a sharp curve and upset their piles of poker-chips.
“I ain’t got a solid j’int in m’ body,” declared a wizen-faced cattleman seriously, holding his chips in his hands. “By ——, I jist went on this trip t’ say that I’d seen Chicago, but I’ll never see it. Nossir, I won’t. Yeah, I’ll call jist one more bet before I fall apart.”
“One more bet and ‘Hashknife’ will have all the money, anyway,” declared “Sleepy” Stevens, yawning widely.