第72章

Whereupon Jerry shook his head dissentingly, grinned and gave Eddie so emphatic an impulse toward his horse that the kid went sprawling.

"Guess We're up against it, all right--but I do wish yo 'd lose that badge!" Jerry surrendered, and flipped the bridle reins over the neck of his horse. "Horn toad is right, the way you're scabbling around amongst them rocks," he called light-heartedly to the kid. "Ever see a purtier sunrise? I never!"

I don't know what they thought of the sunset. Gorgeous it was, with many soft colors blended into unnamable tints and translucencies, and the songs of birds in the thickets as they passed. Smoky, Sunfish and Stopper walked briskly, ears perked forward, heads up, eyes eager to catch the familiar landmarks that meant home. Bud's head was up, also, his eyes went here and there, resting with a careless affection on those same landmarks which spelled home. He would have let Smoky's reins have a bit more slack and would have led his little convoy to the corrals at a gallop, had not hope begun to tremble and shrink from meeting certainty face to face.

Had you asked him then, I think Bud would have owned himself a coward. Until he had speech with home-folk he would merely be hoping that Marian was there; but until he had speech with them he need not hear that they knew nothing of her. Bud--like, however, he tried to cover his trepidation with a joke.

"We'll sneak up on. 'em," he said to Ed and Jerry when the roofs of house and stables came into view.

Here's where I grew up, boys. And in a minute or two more you'll see the greatest little mother on earth--and the finest dad," he added, swallowing the last of his Scotch stubbornness.

"And Sis, I hope," Eddie said wistfully. "I sure hope she's here."

Neither Jerry nor Bud answered him at all. Smoky threw up his head suddenly and gave a shrill whinny, and a horse at the corrals answered sonorously.

"Say! That sounds to me like Boise!" Eddie exclaimed, standing up in his stirrups to look.

Bud turned pale, then flushed hotly. "Don't holler!" he muttered, and held Smoky back a little. For just one reason a young man's heart pounds as Bud's heart pounded then. Jerry looked at him, took a deep breath and bit his lip thoughtfully. It may be that Jerry's heartbeats were not quite normal just then, but no one would ever know.

They rode slowly to a point near the corner of the table, and there Bud halted the two with his lifted hand. Bud was trembling a little--but he was smiling, too. Eddie was frankly grinning, Jerry's face was the face of a good poker-player--it told nothing.

In a group with their backs to them stood three: Marian, Bud's mother and his father. Bob Birnie held Boise by the bridle, and the two women were stroking the brown nose of the horse that moved uneasily, with little impatient head-tossings.

"He doesn't behave like a horse that has made the long trip he has made," Bud's mother observed admiringly. "You must be a wonderful little horsewoman, my dear, as well as a wonderful little woman in every other way. Buddy should never have sent you on such a trip--just to bring home money, like a bank messenger! But I'm glad that he did! And I do wish you would consent to stay--such an afternoon with music I haven't had since Buddy left us. You could stay with me and train for the concert work you intend doing. I'm only an old ranch woman in a slat sunbonnet--but I taught my Buddy--and have you heard him?"

"An old woman in a slat sunbonnet--oh, how can you? Why, you're the most wonderful woman in the whole world." Marian's voice was almost tearful in its protest. "Yes--I have heard--your Buddy."

"'T is the strangest way to go about selling a horse that I ever saw," Bob Birnie put in dryly, smoothing his beard while he looked at them. "We'd be glad to have you stay, lass. But you've asked me to place a price on the horse, and I should like to ask ye a question or two. How fast did ye say he could run?"

Marian laid an arm around the shoulders of the old lady in a slat sunbonnet and patted her arm while she answered.

"Well, he beat everything in the country, so they refused to race against him, until Bud came with his horses," she replied. "It took Sunfish to outrun him. He 's terribly fast, Mr. Birnie. I--really, I think he could beat the world's record--if Bud rode him!"

Just here you should picture Ed and Jerry with their hands over their mouths, and Bud wanting to hide his face with his hat.

Bob Birnie's beard behaved oddly for a minute, while he leaned and stroked Boise's flat forelegs, that told of speed.