Surratt turned to the porch. He went along it, stepping into the bunkroom. Osbrook was lying on one bunk, Perrigo on another. The kid sat up to the table, playing solitaire in moody silence. None of them looked directly at him, yet as he unrolled his blankets and pulled off his clothes he felt the effect of a sidewise, covert scrutiny. He rolled into the bunk and put a palm over his eyes and stared above him, slowly balancing the help they had given him against the unqualified hatred they bore him. There was the thread of motive running through this contradiction, but he could not ferret it out They were men who answered only to the whip: they did not understand softness. He knew then he had something to do here.
He turned his head toward the kid and spoke bluntly, ungently. "Kill that light, kid."
Ferd Bowie's head jerked. The sullen hatred that was so strong in him poured across the room. He burst out: "What the hell did you come here for?"
Surratt reared from his blankets. He put a hand on the edge of the bed. "If I come over there, runt, I'll spank you dry. Put out the light."
The kid kicked back his chair, rising. There was a violent agony of choice printed on his sallow cheeks. Nick Perrigo remained still on his bunk and looked at this scene with a bright, scheming attention. But the kid blew out the light and stamped from the room. Presently Surratt heard Perrigo get up and call Osbrook. They went out. A door slammed down the porch. In a moment he heard their voices rising and quarreling with the fainter voice of Torveen.
Something was plain enough to Surratt then. Torveen hired them because he needed them. But it appeared they had gotten beyond his control. Maybe this was why Torveen had offered him the job. He considered it slowly. But he was tired, and there was a sharp regret in him for the ways of life he could not escape and the hope of something he could not name and could never reach; and presently he fell asleep.
GIRL WITH THE YELLOW HAIR
Surratt swung into his saddle. "I'm going to have a look at this country."
Torveen murmured idly: "That's all right."
Morning swelled across the meadow in warm full waves of sunlight. Surratt's horse pitched gently around the yard, strong with the desire to travel, but Surratt was watching Nick Perrigo, who remained so still and dissenting by the bunkroom door. There was a challenge in this man, rising from some obscure purpose. And then Surratt let the pony go, lining out over a meadow still sparkling with night's dew.
The sky was flawlessly blue, and a piny smell lay thick and pleasant in this upland air. Five hundred yards beyond he reached the trees and passed into them, following the climbing curves of a broad trail. He looked back at this point to find what he had expected he might find; a rider cut away from the ranch house and trotted over the meadow at a different angle, soon disappearing.
But the morning laid its ease upon Surratt and he was smiling in a way that relieved the gray sharpness of his smoky eyes, and his glance traveled the quiet brown corridors of these hills with an eagerness long unknown to him. He passed the scar of a woodcutter's camp, thereupon falling into an ancient corduroy road. The day was turning hot, a faint drone of the forest's minute life disturbing this shadowy stillness. A bird's scarlet wings flashed out sudden brilliance across the trail. Impelled by the restless vigor of his body, he kept climbing, and two hours later came to a bald knob high on a ridge where two roads crossed and an ancient signboard pointed northward, reading: "Carson's Ford." He went on out into the clearing—and stopped.
Eastward the timber rose in continuous green folds. But elsewhere, from this high vantage point, the hill country lay clearly visible under the gold streamers of the sun. Far to the west the desert rolled on beneath its own sultry flashing—on to copper and blue horizons. Nearer, crowded against the trees, the housetops of Morgantown made a rectangular pattern against the tawny earth. He caught all this in one sweep, and turned then to look directly below him. He had climbed the southern side of the ridge and saw at his feet a valley running away from the north slope of the ridge. Narrow and summer-yellow, it lay between stiff-pitched hill walls, with fences setting off its surface in square design and one long ranch house sitting in the center of it, surrounded by outbuildings. A river cut a black-green serpentine course down the valley's middle, crossed by a bridge; on the road beside the river were the lifting dust puffs of some stray rider. He considered the picture with a definite approval, and then looked regretfully to the high east, where the Gray Bull peaks marked the boundary of some far country. There was a feeling in him to be on his way, to run with the days and leave his campfires behind him, one by one, until the rash and foot-loose mood in him turned cold. But even as he thought of it, he remembered his obligation to Sam Torveen and turned back to the trees.
A woman sat on a roan mare and waited for him, just inside the trees. When he came up to her and stopped—because she barred his way—he saw that her eyes, gray as his own, were direct and strong with interest. She wore the same clothes he had seen on her the morning before in Morgantown, a man's denim overalls stuffed into boots, a man's wool shirt loose across a firm and rounded chest. She held her hat across the saddle horn, and deep-yellow hair ran faintly lawless back from features as serene and fair as he had ever seen on a woman. Restlessness swayed her a little.
He said, "Good mornin', Miss Cameron," and lifted his stetson.
There was a smile lying behind the contour of her lips. "I wondered if you'd remember me."
"Why not?"
She said: "Well, you had your mind full of other things yesterday morning."
"My name," he told her quietly, "is Buck Surratt."
"I was about to ask you," she murmured.
He said: "What is that valley down there?"
"It belongs to my people."
"What's beyond the ridge?"
"Another valley, where the Peyrolles run." Her head turned and indicated the timbered masses in the higher east. "If you ride that way you'll run into Head country. Martin Head. Bill's father." She looked at him with a more direct interest. "Leslie Head's father also—the boy that was shot near your campfire the other night."
He said: "My campfire was out."
Her chin lifted with a certain resoluteness. Her voice at the moment had the candid directness of a man. "I came here to talk to you about that."
"How'd you know I'd be here?"
"I've been following you ever since you left Sam Torveen's place."
Admiration was strong in him. She had a poise and a serenity. Good breeding defined all the regular features of her face and made them expressive and stirring. He kept his peace, waiting for her to go on.
"Were you curious about that shot, Buck?"
He reached for his pipe and packed it and lighted it. He swept a gust of good smoke into his lungs. His mind was on the question, but he noticed the sudden gravity on her smooth cheeks. He said finally: "I did a little looking around."
"You went down to the cabin?"
"Yes."
"Inside?"
He said, "Yes," again, very slowly.
Her question was rapid and concerned: "Did you find something in that cabin, Buck? Something you put in your pocket and carried away?"
Her hands, he observed, were long and slender and supple; and she held them quietly folded on the saddle horn. A slanting beam of sunlight reached through the trees to accent the yellow luster in her hair; and that rich color deepened the ivory tints of her skin. But there