‘Well,’ confessed Sleepy, ‘that’s the way she looks to me. Whatsa use of stayin’ around here any longer? We’ve got to land a couple of jobs for the winter, ain’t we?’
‘Did we ever quit before the last dog was hung?’
Sleepy shook his head gloomily. They had been together for quite a number of years, these two drifting cowboys. Their trails had led from the wide lands of Alberta to the Mexican border, and no matter where they were there was always a hill just beyond which beckoned them on.
Sleepy had been christened David in the little Idaho town where he was born, but it had been soon changed to his present cognomen because of the fact that, like a weasel, he seemed to sleep with both eyes open.
He and Henry Hartley had met on the old ranch which gave Henry the name of Hashknife, and together these two cowboys of the itching feet struck out for themselves. The ranges were wide and there was plenty of demand for the services of top-hand cowboys, but they did not stay long in any one place.
Fate had given Hashknife an analytical mind. In a different environment he might have been a famous detective instead of a drifting cowboy, a Nemesis of range crooks, where, in most cases, the six-shooter superseded the court of law.
It seemed as though Fate continually threw them into troubled places, no matter which way they traveled, until even Sleepy, prone to argument, admitted that there was little use trying to dodge the issue. Sleepy analyzed nothing. He was content to follow the lengthy Hashknife, no matter where the trail led, and to be ready for trouble at the finish.
Their remuneration had been small. In fact, they might better have been working at forty dollars a month, as far as the financial end of their partnership was concerned. Two horses, riding rigs, clothes, guns, and a few dollars were all they ever had.
‘Yuh can’t take anythin’ with yuh,’ Hashknife had often said when Sleepy remarked about their financial returns.
‘The farther we go, the less chance we have of livin’ to a ripe old age; so what good is the money? I’d rather give while I’m alive to see the happiness it brings. And if we had a lot of money, we wouldn’t know what in hell to spend it for.’