“Who’s worryin’?” flared Steve. “We’d sooner work for our board for Rance McCoy than to get a raise at any other ranch.”
“Yuh ought to—he lets yuh do as yuh please.”
“Can yuh imagine a disposition like that?” queried Monty. “Chuckwalla, you ought to have rattles, like a snake; you’ve got the disposition of one.”
The old man chuckled over his pans. He delighted in rough sarcasm.
Hashknife left right after breakfast. Chuckwalla came out to his horse and shook hands with Hashknife.
“I hope yuh can get some track of Rance,” he said. “I tell yuh, I’m worried about the old man.”
“It’s time somebody got worried about him,” said Hashknife.
He rode back almost to the river and then turned southwest, intending to take another look at the old dugout, and wondering if he could find it again. He felt sure he could come in from the opposite direction and find it.
Hashknife traveled slowly and cautiously, trying to pick up some of the landmarks he had noticed when they were in there before. Down among the breaks he struck an old cattle-trail, which he felt would lead him fairly close to the dugout, but it split up at an old waterhole in a brushy coulee.
There were plenty of Half-Box R cattle in that part of the range, many of them as wild as deer. Hashknife worked his way back to the top of a rocky ridge, where he dismounted and made a cigarette. The breeze was from the west, and before his cigarette was rolled his nose caught a peculiar scent.