While with one brown hand he held them back, with the other he swept
off his wide, black hat.
"How do, Mess!" he cried, softly, his teeth flashing a white greeting.
She answered him with a "Hello, Joe!" as she climbed to his side.
Joe loosened his reins a very little, called sharply to his horses,
and in a whirlwind of dust the buckboard made an amazingly sharp turn
and shot rattling down the road and out toward the mountains in the
south.
"And now what?" grinned Hapgood, maliciously. "Even your country girl
has gone!"
Greek Conniston gazed a moment after the flying buckboard, a vague,
wavering, unreal thing, through the dust of its own making, and,
hiding his disappointment under a shrug, turned to Hapgood.
"Now for a hotel somewhere, if the place has one. Come on, Roger.
We're in for it now, so let's make the best of it."
Carrying his suit-case, he strode off toward the saloon, Roger
following silently. The lanky, sunburned individual in the doorway
watched their approach idly for a moment and then turned his lazy eyes
to a cow and calf trudging past toward the watering-trough.
"Hello, friend!" called Conniston.
The lanky individual drew his eyes from the cow and calf, bestowed a
long look and a fleeting nod upon the two strangers, and turned again
toward the trough, little impressed, little interested in the
Easterners.
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