Part 7 (1/2)

”Confound the horses!” says Jim, ”let's burn the trail for home. Roll your trail, Pedro! _Vamenos!_”

”But the child horses, my lord, gra.s.s-fed only, in the hot desert.”

”Roll your tail and roll it high, We'll all be angels by-and-by!”

And Jim would lope along with a glad heart, singing the round-up songs--

”Little black bull came down the hillside, Down the hillside, down the hillside, Little black bull came down the hillside, Long time ago.”

Then he would go on some more happy when he thought of the big tune to ”Roll, Powder, Roll!”

As I heard afterwards, the outfit was rounding the shoulder of the hill about five miles out when, on the ridge beyond, Mr. Jim's bright eye took note of something alive.

”A vulture only, my lord,” says the segundo, ”eating a dead horse.”

”A quart of kittens!” says my lord, some scornful. ”Call that a vulture?” and off he sailed, clattering down a slope of loose rocks.

”That bird is a man-bird flapping at us for help. Segundo, you've no more range of sight than a boiled owl.”

The segundo came grumbling along behind, and they curved off across the level. ”That man has lost his horse,” says Jim; ”thirsty, I guess, and signalling for help. Go back, Terrazas, and tell the men to wait.”

”Si, senor,” and Terrazas rolled back to the trail.

As Jim got nearer he saw that the man on the hill had signalled nothing, but his coat tails were a-flutter in the wind. Now he came all flapping from rock to rock down the hillside. ”h.e.l.lo!” Jim shouted.

The stranger squatted down on a rock to wait for him, and sat wiping his face on a red handkerchief. He was dressed all in black, a sky-scout of sorts, but dusty and making signs as though he couldn't shout for thirst. Jim took his half-gallon canteen, ranged up, and dismounted.

”Curious,” he was thinking; ”lips not swollen, tongue not black, this man ain't thirsty much!”

”My deah young friend,” says the preacher between drinks, ”you're the means under Heaven of my deliverance”--gulp--”from a shocking end.”

”Scared you'd have to go to heaven?” asked Jim.

”I was afraid”--gulp--”that I must give up my labours in this vale of”--gulp--”for which I was found unworthy.”

”Is that so?”

”Seh, I have walked far, and am much exhausted.”

Jim looked at the preacher's pants, and saw that a streak of the cloth from knee to ankle was dusty none--the same being the mark of the stirrup leathers. He could not have walked a hundred yards from his horse.

”Stranger,” says Jim, ”your horse is just on the other side of this hill.”

”Yes, indeed--but it never lets me get any nearer, and I've chased it for miles!”

”I'll catch your horse.” Jim swung to his seat, spurred off, circled the hilltop, and found the preacher's horse, rein to the ground, unable to trot without being tripped at once, dead easy to catch at one jump. This parson man was a liar, anyway.

Then something caught Jim's eye, a sort of winking star on a hill-crest far to the east. He watched that star winking steady to right and left.

The thing was a heliograph making talk, as it supposed, to the preacher, and Jim watched harder than ever.

He couldn't read the signs, so wondering most plentiful, he spurred up to find out if anything more could be seen from the crest of the hill.

Yes, there lay the railroad, and the town of Lordsburgh, plain as a map.