Nabours, shutting his jackknife and putting it in his pocket, paused as he saw a man ride out from the cover of the mesquite. He knew him—McMasters, who had not been seen since the affair of the Rudabaugh herd cutters. “Huh! There’s Gonzales at last! He’s powerful searchy about his work.” McMasters came in, the last at the fire, and was hardly welcomed. About him hung still the indefinable difference that set him apart from these whose lives were spent in the saddle, and this now had grown intensified. He was dressed as they were, but his garments fitted better, he was neater, trimmer. His eye, gray and narrow, was calm, his tongue silent as ever. A slow ease, deliberate, unhurrying, unwasting, marked his movements. Still he seemed with them, not of them, and they held their peace of him. “I ask your pardon,” he said at length to Nabours, “but you see, I’m a cow hand and a sheriff both. I had a little business overnight. I’m ready to make a hand now if I can.” “Well, we’re ready to pull out,” replied the foreman. “Del, didn’t Sanchez tell you the two carts was ready?” “_Si Señor_,” nodded his segundo. “Old Milly went to bed in hern last night, to get a good start, she said,” volunteered Len Hersey. “She taken her old Long Tom musket to bed with her. You see, enduring the war, Milly’s husband, Tom, he done jine a Yankee nigger regiment and never did come back home a-tall. That’s how come Milly to go north—she’s lookin’ fer Tom. ‘Ef Ah ever kotch sight’n dat nigger,’ says she, ‘Ah sho gwine blow out his lights fer him.’” “Well, don’t let Milly talk war too much, so’s to spoil her cooking for the boss,” said Nabours. “They’ll make a separate camp. Put Anita on Miss Taisie’s cart, for when she gets tired of the saddle Milly can ride in the cook cart.” “Is Miss Lockhart really going?” asked Dan McMasters suddenly. “She shore is going. I told her to pull out late in the morning from the big house and follow our trail. Lord help the girl! There ain’t no woman belongs on a fool trip like this here one. “Move ’em out, boys,” said he at length, quietly. “Mr. McMasters, I want you on point, with Del Williams.” And so, unemotionally, there began one of the wildest and strangest journeys ever made in any land. * * * * *