The journey to Wallace’s ranch was uneventful except for a stop at the former Brandon ranch at Twin Forks, where Solange met the Basco proprietors, and gave her cow-puncher henchmen further cause for wonder by conversing fluently with them in a language which bore no resemblance to any they had ever heard before. They noted an unusual deference which the shy mountaineers extended toward her.
There was a pause of some time while Solange visited the almost obliterated mound marking the grave of her father. But she did not pray over it 176 or manifest any great emotion. She simply stood there for some time, lost in thought, or else mentally renewing her vow of vengeance on his murderer. Then, after discovering that the sheepmen knew nothing of consequence concerning these long-past events, she came quietly back to the car and they resumed the journey.
Finally they passed a camp fire set back from the road at some distance and the cow-punchers pointed out the figure of Banker crouched above it, apparently oblivious of them.
“What you all reckon that old horned toad is a-doin’ here?” queried Dave, from the front seat. “Dry camp, and him only three mile from the house and not more’n five from the Spring.”
“Dunno,” replied Sucatash. “Him bein’ a prospector, that a way, most likely he ain’t got the necessary sense to camp where a white man naturally would bog down.”
“But any one would know enough to camp near water,” said Solange, surprised.
“Yes’m,” agreed Sucatash, solemnly. “Any one would! But them prospectors ain’t human, that a way. They lives in the deserts so much they gets kind of wild and flighty, ma’am. Water is so scarce that they gets to regardin’ it as somethin’ onnatural and dangerous. More’n enough of it to give ’em a drink or two and water the Jennies acts on ’em all 177 same like it does on a hydrophoby skunk. They foams at the mouth and goes mad.”
“With hydrophobia?” exclaimed the unsophisticated Solange.
“Yes’m,” said Sucatash. “Especially if it’s deep enough to cover their feet. Yuh see, ma’am, they gets in mortal terror that, if they nears enough water to wet ’em all over, some one will rack in and just forcibly afflict ’em with a bath—which ’ud sure drive one of ’em plumb loco.”
“I knows one o’ them desert rats,” said Dave, reminiscently, “what boasts a plenty about the health he enjoys. Which he sure allows he’s lived to a ripe old age—and he was ripe, all right. This here venerableness, he declares a whole lot, is solely and absolutely due to the ondisputable fact that he ain’t never bathed in forty-two years. And we proves him right, at that.”