“Thanks!” laughed Cranny.
The two Rangers picked up their rifles, which rested in a near-by corner, and with the crowd following at their heels walked out on the wide veranda which extended entirely around the old rambling building.
Good-byes were said. Then the crowd watched the policemen untie their fiery mustangs and swing themselves into the saddle. The animals kicked up their heels, shot forward, then settling into a loping trot carried them swiftly away.
On all sides of the house stretched a broad undulating prairie covered with long waving grass which sparkled in the light of a cloudless day. To the southwest, seen as flat, gray masses against a sky of dazzling brilliancy, rose the low, irregular hills of Mexico, just across the Rio Grande. Northward, a line of cottonwoods and oaks fringed the border of an unseen watercourse, and dotted over the great expanse were groups of trees or other vegetation.
Amid this immensity of space the figures of the rapidly retreating horsemen seemed to be dwarfed to mere pigmy proportions; but even from afar the rays of the sun, striking on pistol butts or trappings, continued to send back spots of flashing light.
Cranny Beaumont drew a long breath. With all the eagerness of a bird which sees the door of its cage open and freedom before it he observed these vast reaches extending off to a hazy distance. How different it was from being cooped up in a city office, a din of clicking typewriters continually sounding in his ears!
“Well, fellows!” he said.
And then such a curiously sober look chased away his expression of whole-hearted enjoyment that Tom spoke up:
“What’s the matter, Cranny?”
“Tell us the secret sorrow,” chirped Dick.