“Good evenin’,” said Jean.
After what appeared to Jean a lapse of time sufficient to impress him with a possible deafness of these men, the gaunt-faced one said, “Howdy, Isbel!”
The tone was impersonal, dry, easy, cool, laconic, and yet it could not have been more pregnant with meaning. Jean’s sharp sensibilities absorbed much. None of the slouch-sombreroed, long-mustached Texans—for so Jean at once classed them—had ever seen Jean, but they knew him and knew that he was expected in Grass Valley. All but the one who had spoken happened to have their faces in shadow under the wide-brimmed black hats. Motley-garbed, gun-belted, dusty-booted, they gave Jean the same impression of latent force that he had encountered in Colter.
“Will somebody please tell me where to find my father, Gaston Isbel?” inquired Jean, with as civil a tongue as he could command.
Nobody paid the slightest attention. It was the same as if Jean had not spoken. Waiting, half amused, half irritated, Jean shot a rapid glance around the store. The place had felt bare; and Jean, peering back through gloomy space, saw that it did not contain much. Dry goods and sacks littered a long rude counter; long rough shelves divided their length into stacks of canned foods and empty sections; a low shelf back of the counter held a generous burden of cartridge boxes, and next to it stood a rack of rifles. On the counter lay open cases of plug tobacco, the odor of which was second in strength only to that of rum.
Jean’s swift-roving eye reverted to the men, three of whom were absorbed in the greasy checkerboard. The fourth man was the one who had spoken and he now deigned to look at Jean. Not much flesh was there stretched over his bony, powerful physiognomy. He stroked a lean chin with a big mobile hand that suggested more of bridle holding than familiarity with a bucksaw and plow handle. It was a lazy hand. The man looked lazy. If he spoke at all it would be with lazy speech, yet Jean had not encountered many men to whom he would have accorded more potency to stir in him the instinct of self-preservation.
“Shore,” drawled this gaunt-faced Texan, “old Gass lives aboot a mile down heah.” With slow sweep of the big hand he indicated a general direction to the south; then, appearing to forget his questioner, he turned his attention to the game.
Jean muttered his thanks and, striding out, he mounted again, and drove the pack mule down the road. “Reckon I’ve ran into the wrong folds to-day,” he said. “If I remember dad right he was a man to make an’ keep friends. Somehow I’ll bet there’s goin’ to be hell.” Beyond the store were some rather pretty and comfortable homes, little ranch houses back in the coves of the hills. The road turned west and Jean saw his first sunset in the Tonto Basin. It was a pageant of purple clouds with silver edges, and background of deep rich gold. Presently Jean met a lad driving a cow. “Hello, Johnny!” he said, genially, and with a double purpose. “My name’s Jean Isbel. By Golly! I’m lost in Grass Valley. Will you tell me where my dad lives?”
“Yep. Keep right on, an’ y’u cain’t miss him,” replied the lad, with a bright smile. “He’s lookin’ fer y’u.”
“How do you know, boy?” queried Jean, warmed by that smile.