Part 4 (1/2)
Linder quickly converted the apparent chaos of horses, wagons and implements into order; Transley had a last word with Y.D., and the rancher, shouting ”Good luck, boys! Make it a thousand tons or more,”
waved them away.
Linder glanced back at the house. The bright suns.h.i.+ne had not awakened it; it lay dreaming in its grove of cool, green trees.
The trail lay, not up the valley, but across the wedge of foothills which divided the South Y.D. from the parent stream. The a.s.sent was therefore much more rapid than the trails which followed the general course of the stream. Huge hills, shouldering together, left at times only wagon-track room between; at other places they skirted dangerous cutbanks worn by spring freshets, and again trekked for long distances over gently curving uplands. In an hour the horses were showing the strain of it, and Linder halted them for a momentary rest.
It was at that moment that Drazk rode up, his face a study in obvious annoyance.
”Danged if I ain't left that Pete-horse's blanket down at the Y.D.,” he exclaimed.
”Oh, well, you can easily ride back for it and catch up on us this afternoon,” said Linder, who was not in the least deceived.
”Thanks, Lin,” said Drazk. ”I'll beat it down an' catch up on you this afternoon, sure,” and he was off down the trail as fast as ”that Pete-horse” could carry him.
At the Y.D. George conducted the search for his horse blanket in the strangest places. It took him mainly about the yard of the house, and even to the kitchen door, where he interviewed the Chinese boy.
”You catchee horse blanket around here?” he inquired, with appropriate gesticulations.
”You losee hoss blanket?”
”Yep.”
”What kind hoss blanket?”
”Jus' a brown blanket for that Pete-horse.”
”Whose hoss?”
”Mine,” proudly.
”Where you catchee?”
”Raised him.”
”Good hoss?”
”You betcha.”
”Huh!”
Pause.
”You no catchee horse blanket, hey?”
”No!” said the Chinaman, whose manner instantly changed. In this brief conversation he had cla.s.sified Drazk, and cla.s.sified him correctly. ”You catchee him, though--some h.e.l.l, too--you stickee lound here. Beat it,”
and Drazk found the kitchen door closed in his face.
Drazk wandered slowly around the side of the house, and was not above a surrept.i.tious glance through the windows. They revealed nothing. He followed a path out by a little gate. His ruse had proven a blind trail, and there was nothing to do but go down to the stables, take the horse blanket from the peg where he had hung it, and set out again for the South Y.D.
As he turned a corner of the fence the sight of a young woman burst upon him. She was hatless and facing the sun. Drazk, for all his admiration of the s.e.x, had little eye for detail. ”A sort of chestnut, about sixteen hands high, and with the look of a thoroughbred,” he afterwards described her to Linder.