Waifs and Strays, etc | Page 5

his
sorrel to the right and let him pick his way daintily across a sacuista flat
through which ran the ragged, dry bed of an arroyo. Then up a gravelly
hill, matted with bush, the hoarse scrambled, and at length emerged,
with a snort of satisfaction into a stretch of high, level prairie, grassy
and dotted with the lighter green of mesquites in their fresh spring
foliage. Always to the right Burrows bore, until in a little while he
struck the old Indian trail that followed the Nueces southward, and that
passed, twenty-eight miles to the southeast, through Lone Elm.
Here Burrows urged the sorrel into a steady lope. As he settled himself
in the saddle for a long ride he heard the drumming of hoofs, the
hollow "thwack" of chaparral against wooden stirrups, the whoop of a
Comanche; and Wells Pearson burst out of the brush at the right of the
trail like a precocious yellow chick from a dark green Easter egg.
Except in the presence of awing femininity melancholy found no place
in Pearson's bosom. In Tonia's presence his voice was as soft as a
summer bullfrog's in his reedy nest. Now, at his gleesome yawp, rabbits,
a mile away, ducked their ears, and sensitive plants closed their fearful

fronds.
"Moved your lambing camp pretty far from the ranch, haven't you,
neighbor?" asked Pearson, as Road Runner fell in at the sorrel's side.
"Twenty-eight miles," said Burrows, looking a little grim. Pearson's
laugh woke an owl one hour too early in his water-elm on the river
bank, half a mile away.
"All right for you, sheepman. I like an open game, myself. We're two
locoed he-milliners hat-hunting in the wilderness. I notify you. Burr, to
mind your corrals. We've got an even start, and the one that gets the
headgear will stand some higher at the Espinosa."
"You've got a good pony," said Burrows, eyeing Road Runner's barrel-
like body and tapering legs that moved as regularly as the pistonrod of
an engine. "It's a race, of course; but you're too much of a horseman to
whoop it up this soon. Say we travel together till we get to the home
stretch."
"I'm your company," agreed Pearson, "and I admire your sense. If
there's hats at Lone Elm, one of 'em shall set on Miss Tonia's brow
to-morrow, and you won't be at the crowning. I ain't bragging, Burr, but
that sorrel of yours is weak in the fore-legs."
"My horse against yours," offered Burrows, "that Miss Tonia wears the
hat I take her to Cactus to-morrow."
"I'll take you up," shouted Pearson. "But oh, it's just like horse- stealing
for me! I can use that sorrel for a lady's animal when-- when somebody
comes over to Mucho Calor, and--"
Burrows' dark face glowered so suddenly that the cowman broke off his
sentence. But Pearson could never feel any pressure for long.
"What's all this Easter business about, Burr?" he asked, cheerfully.
"Why do the women folks have to have new hats by the almanac or
bust all cinches trying to get 'em?"
"It's a seasonable statute out of the testaments," explained Burrows.
"It's ordered by the Pope or somebody. And it has something to do with
the Zodiac I don't know exactly, but I think it was invented by the
Egyptians."
"It's an all-right jubilee if the heathens did put their brand on it," said
Pearson; "or else Tonia wouldn't have anything to do with it. And they
pull it off at church, too. Suppose there ain't but one hat in the Lone
Elm store, Burr!"

"Then," said Burrows, darkly, "the best man of us'll take it back to the
Espinosa."
"Oh, man!" cried Pearson, throwing his hat high and catching it again,
"there's nothing like you come off the sheep ranges before. You talk
good and collateral to the occasion. And if there's more than one?"
"Then," said Burrows, "we'll pick our choice and one of us'll get back
first with his and the other won't."
"There never was two souls," proclaimed Pearson to the stars, "that
beat more like one heart than yourn and mine. Me and you might be
riding on a unicorn and thinking out of the same piece of mind."
At a little past midnight the riders loped into Lone Elm. The half a
hundred houses of the big village were dark. On its only street the big
wooden store stood barred and shuttered.
In a few moments the horses were fastened and Pearson was pounding
cheerfully on the door of old Sutton, the storekeeper.
The barrel of a Winchester came through a cranny of a solid window
shutter followed by a short inquiry.
"Wells Pearson, of the Mucho Calor, and Burrows, of Green Valley,"
was the response. "We want to buy some