"By gad!" and the little man popped from his chair and paced the verandah, crying inwardly: "They're my boys; I'd like to forgive them and shoot Carney—damn him! he's at the bottom of it."
The great arrogant sun, supreme in his regal gold, had slipped down behind the jagged mountain peaks as Carney, on his little buckskin, and the blond giant, FritzHerbert, on a bay, swung at a lope out of Fort Calbert for a breather over the prairie.
As they rode, almost silently, they suddenly heard the shuffling "pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat" of a cayuse, and in a little cloud of white dust to the west there grew to their eyes the blurred form of a horseman that seemed to droop almost to the horn of his saddle.
"A tired nichie," FitzHerbert commented; "he smells sow-belly frying in the town—he hasn't eaten for a moon, I should say."
The dust cloud swirled closer, and Carney's gray eyes picked out the familiar form of Lathy George, one of Dan Stewart's men. The rider yanked his cayuse to a stand when they met, almost reeling from the saddle in exhaustion. The cayuse spread his legs, drooped his head, and the flanks of his lean belly pumped as if his lungs were parched.
"Hello, Bulldog!" then the man looked warily at Carney's companion.
FitzHerbert saw the look and knew from the stranger's physical shatterment that some vital errand had spurred him; so he touched a heel to his bay's flank and moved slowly along the trail.
Then the rider of the cayuse in tired, panting gasps gave Carney his message.
"All right, George," Bulldog commented at the finish; "go to the Victoria, feed your horse, have a good supper, get a room and sleep."
"What'll I do, boss, when I wake up—how long'll I sleep?"