"I don't think we'd better both go anyway. In the
morning you can fit me out with a fresh team, if you will. I crowded
things a bit on the way up."
For a moment the rancher sat staring at his guest blankly,
unbelievingly; then for the second time came understanding.
"Perhaps after all you're right," he acquiesced. "It's only eighty
miles, and there's plenty of time."
Beneath the craggy brows the blaze still glowed undimmed in the old
storekeeper's deep-set eyes.
"Yes, there's plenty of time--after How Landor knows," he said.
* * * * *
In the midst of the prairie wilderness Providence had placed a tiny
dawdling creek. At a point where the creek wandered through a spot a
shade lower than the surrounding country, man, a man, had builded a dam.
In the fulness of time the accumulated water had formed a fair-sized
pond that glittered and shimmered in the sunlight, until from a little
altitude it could be seen for miles. To this pond, for open water was
very, very scarce on the prairie in September, came water fowl from near
and afar; from no man knew where. As steel filings respond to a magnet,
they came, and as inevitably; stragglingly, suspiciously by day, in
flocks that grew to be a perfect cloud by night. A tent that had once
been white, but that was now weather-stained and darkened by smoke, was
pitched near at hand; but they minded it not. An evil-looking
mouse-coloured cayuse grazed likewise, hard by; but for them a broncho
had no terror.
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