Maw was coming, taking short, quick steps and waving the mosquitoes off with her apron. Behind her, Marge was walking with many short halts while she wrote something in her notebook, while whooping along in the rear came Skookum, driving Lightfoot and flailing him with a tall weed to keep him at a high gallop. Bud's eyes lingered on the bent head of Marge, and he loitered, waiting for her. Then, his glance going to the boy, his face hardened again with the purpose that filled his mind. It was after he had eaten and Marge was waiting in the living room, hoping Bud would come in and talk to her after the deadly monotony of the past two days, that Bud artfully drew Skookum off by himself and turned the conversation very casually to Butch Cassidy. He wanted to know what it was that Butch had been talking about; but Skookum, unfortunately, had promised not to tell. "Well, that's all right, pardner. If you promised, don't go back on your word; unless," he added, "it was something mean. In that case, of course, I ought to know." "It wasn't mean," said Skookum, after a pause for reflection. "If you asked questions like Butch did, I'd tell you more'n I told Butch. I--I didn't tell him any more than--than I had to. I--wouldn't hold out on you that way, Bud. You're my--my pal." Bud could have hugged the boy. There was a chance, then, that Butch had not learned much more than they all had heard in the bunk house. He did not see just what use Butch could make of the information gleaned in this manner, but he knew what he himself wanted to do. So Bud began to ask questions, and Skookum answered them as carefully and as completely as possible. When he went to bed that night, Bud kept smiling in the dark until he fell asleep, and even then his lips were curved as if his dreams were pleasant. Skookum smiled also and dreamed of the pinto pony Bud had given him for his very own; a pony that was too small for a full-grown man; a pony with white eyelashes, one blue eye, a doglike devotion to any one who would pet him, and the unusual name of Huckleberry. The satisfaction of Bud and Skookum must have continued through the night, for both were up and out in the cool, dewy dawn when all the birds were ruffling feathers and puffing throats in rhapsodical melody. Sooner than would seem humanly possible, Skookum went wading through dew-drenched meadows that straightway wet his feet, a frayed rope end dragging from the coil hung over his arm and in his two hands a battered basin holding oats enough to founder the pinto pony--or so Jake would have told him.