第28章

After that she questioned him adroitly. Perversely Bud declined to become confidential, and Honey Krause changed the subject abruptly.

"There's going to be a dance here next Friday night. It'll be a good chance to get acquainted with everybody--if you go.

There'll be good music, I guess. Uncle Dave wrote to Crater for the Saunders boys to come down and play. Do you know anybody in Crater?"

The question was innocent enough, but perverseness still held Bud. He smiled and said he did not know anybody anywhere, any more. He said that if Bobbie Burns had asked him "Should auld acquaintance be forgot," he'd have told him yes, and he'd have made it good and strong. But he added that he was just as willing to make new acquaintance, and thought the dance would be a good place to begin.

Honey gave him a provocative glance from under her lashes, and Bud straightened and stepped back.

"You let folks stop here, I take it. I've a pack outfit and a couple of saddle horses with me. Will it be all right to turn them in the corral? I hate to have them eat post hay all day.

Or I could perhaps go back to the creek and camp."

"Oh, just turn your horses in the corral and make yourself at home till uncle comes," she told him with that tantalizing half-smile. "We keep people here--just for accommodation.

There has to be some place in the valley where folks can stop. I can't promise that uncle will give you a job, but There's going to be chicken and dumplings for dinner. And the mail will be in, about noon--you'll want to wait for that."

She was standing just within the screen door, frankly watching him as he came past the house with the horses, and she came out and halted him when she spied the top of the pack.

"You'd better leave those things here," she advised him eagerly. "I'll put them in the sitting-room by the piano. My goodness, you must be a whole orchestra! If you can play, maybe you and I can furnish the music for the dance, and save Uncle Dave hiring the Saunders boys. Anyway, we can play together, and have real good times."

Bud had an odd feeling that Honey was talking one thing with her lips, and thinking an entirely different set of thoughts.

He eyed her covertly while he untied the cases, and he could have sworn that he saw her signal someone behind the lace curtains of the nearest window. He glanced carelessly that way, but the curtains were motionless. Honey was holding out her hands for the guitar and the mandolin when he turned, so Bud surrendered them and went on to the corrals.

He did not return to the house. An old man was pottering around a machine shed that stood backed against a thick fringe of brush, and when Bud rode by he left his work and came after him, taking short steps and walking with his back bent stiffly forward and his hands swinging limply at his sides.

He had a long black beard streaked with gray, and sharp blue eyes set deep under tufted white eyebrows. He seemed a friendly old man whose interest in life remained keen as in his youth, despite the feebleness of his body. He showed Bud where to turn the horses, and went to work on the pack rope, his crooked old fingers moving with the sureness of lifelong habit. He was eager to know all the news that Bud could tell him, and when he discovered that Bud had just left the Muleshoe, and that he had been fired because of a fight with Dirk Tracy, the old fellow cackled gleefully "Well, now, I guess you just about had yore hands full, young man," he commented shrewdly. "Dirk ain't so easy to lick."

Bud immediately wanted to know why it was taken for granted that he had whipped Dirk, and grandpa chortled again. "Now if you hadn't of licked Dirk, you wouldn't of got fired," he retorted, and proceeded to relate a good deal of harmless gossip which seemed to bear out the statement. Dirk Tracy, according to grandpa, was the real boss of the Muleshoe, and Bart was merely a figure-head.

All of this did not matter to Bud, but grandpa was garrulous.

A good deal of information Bud received while the two attended to the horses and loitered at the corral gate.

Grandpa admired Smoky, and looked him over carefully, with those caressing smoothings of mane and forelock which betray the lover of good horseflesh.

"I reckon he's purty fast," he said, peering shrewdly into Bud's face." The boys has been talking about pulling off some horse races here next Sunday--we got a good, straight, hard-packed creek-bed up here a piece that has been cleaned of rocks fer a mile track, and they're goin' to run a horse er two. Most generally they do, on Sunday, if work's slack. You might git in on it, if you're around in these parts." He pushed his back straight with his palms, turned his head sidewise and squinted at Smoky through half-closed lids while he fumbled for cigarette material.

"I dunno but what I might be willin' to put up a few dollars on that horse myself," he observed, "if you say he kin run.

You wouldn't go an' lie to an old feller like me, would yuh, son?"

Bud offered him the cigarette he had just rolled. "No, I won't lie to you, dad," he grinned. "You know horses too well."

"Well, but kin he run? I want yore word on it."

"Well-yes, he's always been able to turn a cow," Bud admitted cautiously.

"Ever run him fer money?" The old man began teetering from his toes to his heels, and to hitch his shoulders forward and back.

"Well, no, not for money. I've run him once or twice for fun, just trying to beat some of the boys to camp, maybe."

"Sho! That's no way to do! No way at all!" The old man spat angrily into the dust of the corral. Then he thought of something. "Did yuh BEAT 'em?" he demanded sharply.

"Why, sure, I beat them!" Bud looked at him surprised, seemed about to say more, and let the statement stand unqualified.