“This is the very hour the nurse says I’ve got to sleep,” he said. “You’d better be clearin’ out, War-field.”
“And me too?” asked Gail, laughingly.
“The pair o’ you,” replied the invalid, as he lay back languorously and closed his eyes.
“I guess we’d better be going,” laughed Roderick.
“Perhaps Mr. Meisch is awake enough yet,” said Gail, “to hear that I brought over a chicken for his supper.”
“Tell the nurse I’ll have it fried, please,” yawned Scotty, as, without opening his eyes, he turned over his head in slumberous fashion.
“Come away then, Miss Holden,” said Roderick. “I suppose you rode over on Fleetfoot. I’ll saddle Badger, and we’ll have a gallop across country.”
“No doggoned politics there,” exclaimed the cowboy, awaking suddenly, as he watched the handsome couple disappear. “That’s the real thing, sure.”
The summer days glided past. The Major had returned from New York and had quietly resumed his old life of benevolence among the poor. But soon there seemed to be no more poverty in or around Encampment. Roderick, keeping the mining town as his headquarters, made a series of expeditions into the mountains, systematically searching every range and every known canyon. He would be absent for several days at a time, sometimes with Jim Rankin for a companion, Grant Jones once or twice accompanying him, but latterly with Boney Earnest as his fidus Achates. For Boney had severed his connection finally with the Smelter Company, after a quarrel with Grady that had ended in the blast furnace foreman knocking his employer down. Such is the wonderful independence that comes from a bank balance—even a secret bank balance that may not command the deference accorded to known financial prosperity.
Between his prospecting expeditions Roderick spent an occasional evening either at the Conchshell Ranch or at the Major’s, with a flying call now and then at the Shields home, especially when Grant was on one of his periodical visits to Encampment.