‘And get me?’ smiled Nan. ‘What an ambition!’
‘Don’t laugh at me, Nan; I’m serious. Ever since that morning when I awoke and saw you looking out through the window, I’ve had just that ambition.’
‘It will be dark before we reach Cañonville,’ said Nan, turning in her saddle and looking at the fading sunset.
‘You always change the subject, Nan.’
‘I suppose I do, Rex. Why not?’
‘Well, I can have ambitions, can’t I?’
Nan laughed softly. ‘I suppose so, Rex. I guess I haven’t any. We have moved from pillar to post ever since I can remember, and we have never stayed in any one place long enough to have any ambition. Dad has always been restless. I’ll bet I have gone to more schools in this State than any other person. We’d stay a few months in a place, and then Dad would hear of another range. Then it was a case of pack up and move on. This time he promised me that we would stay.’
‘Hashknife and Sleepy always keep moving,’ said Rex. ‘They have actually killed men, Nan. I don’t know how many. I asked Sleepy how many men Hashknife had killed, and he said that he didn’t know, because they had lost the complete list. It must have been a great many.’
Nan smiled sideways at Rex, whose expression was serious. She knew cowboys and their well-stretched yarns.
‘I asked him why it was they never got hung,’ said Rex seriously, ‘and he said it was because nobody had ever found any of their victims.’