"I'm not going to go buttin' in where I'm not wanted any more than you would, Jim. I'll play this hand out with a cool head, but I'm going to play it my ownself."
"All right. It's your say-so. I'll admit you've got a claim. But you want to remember one thing—if anything happens to you I cayn't square it with Phyl. Go slow, boy!"
Without more words they parted, Jim to ride swiftly back for help, and young Sanderson to push on up the trail with his eyes glued to it. Ever since he could swing himself to a saddle he had been a vaquero in the cow country.
He was therefore an expert at reading the signs left by travellers. What would have been invisible to a tenderfoot offered evidence to him as plain as the print on a primer. Mile after mile he covered with a minute scrutiny that never wavered.
CHAPTER XXV
LARRY TELLS A BEAR STORY
Keller rode blithely down the piney trail while the sun flung its brilliant good-bye over the crotch of the mountains behind which it was slipping. The western sky was a Turner sublimated to the nth degree, a thing magnificent and indescribable. The young man rode with his crisp curls bared to the light, grateful breeze that came like healing from the great peaks. From the joyous, unquenchable youth in him bubbled snatches of song and friendly smiles scattered broadcast over a world that pleased him mightily.
He was going to see his girl, going down to the Frying Pan to take her in his arms and whirl her into the land of romance to the rhythm of the waltz. He wanted to shout it out to the chipmunks and the quails. Ever and again he broke out with a line or two of a melody he had heard once from a phonograph. No matter if he did not get the words exactly. He was sure of the sentiment. So the hills flung back his lusty: