“Let’s not talk about that, Harry.”
“Oh, all right. I’ll go up and talk to dad as soon as I put up my horse.”
Harry led his horse back through a wide archway in the patio wall, where the climbing roses almost hid the contour of the arch. He stabled his horse and came outside. A lone rider had just appeared out of the mouth of Red Horse Pass, and was coming slowly down to the big gate, which was always kept securely locked. It was the only way out. There was one more locked gate between that and the JK stable.
Few riders ever came through the Red Horse Pass; and none without the consent of the Kelton family. Harry walked back to the first gate, unlocked it, and went on to the gate where the strange rider waited.
He was rather an odd-looking person, this stranger. About six feet three inches in height, with a long, thin face, high cheekbones, a long nose, not entirely straight, a wide gash of a mouth. His once-blue shirt seemed moulded to his torso, the wrinkles of long duration, and around his neck, which was long and thin, was a well-worn scarlet muffler. His bat-wing chaps were scored from many a mesquite encounter, and the wide cartridge belt and handmade holster from which protruded the butt of a heavy Colt gun had been patched many times. Atop his head perched a wide Stetson, almost shapeless now.
“How do-o-o-o,” he drawled lazily as Harry came up to the gate, and a smile sent a hundred wrinkles dancing across his lean face.
Harry looked at him critically.
“Where’d you come from?” he asked, rather unethically for that country.
“That would prob’ly take a long time in the tellin’,” smiled the stranger. “All my life I’ve been comin’ from some place and goin’ to another. Ain’t this Painted Valley?”
“Yeah, this is Painted Valley.”