Gunsight Pass | Page 9

that stole our horses."
The foreman flushed angrily. "Don't come bellyachin' to me about yore
broomtails. I ain't got 'em."
"We know who's got 'em," said Dave evenly. "What we want is a wage
check so as we can cash it at Malapi."
"You don't get it," returned the big foreman bluntly. "We pay off when
we reach the end of the drive."
"I notice you paid yore brother and Miller when we gave an order for
it," Hart retorted with heat.
"A different proposition. They hadn't signed up for this drive like you
boys did. You'll get what's comin' to you when I pay off the others.
You'll not get it before."
The two riders retired sulkily. They felt it was not fair, but on the trail
the foreman is an autocrat. From the other riders they borrowed a few
dollars and gave in exchange orders on their pay checks.
Within an hour they were on the road. Fresh horses had been roped
from the remuda and were carrying them at an even Spanish jog-trot
through the night. The stars came out, clear and steady above a ghostly
world at sleep. The desert was a place of mystery, of vast space peopled
by strange and misty shapes.
The plain stretched vaguely before them. Far away was the thin outline
of the range which enclosed the valley. The riders held their course by
means of that trained sixth sense of direction their occupation had
developed.
They spoke little. Once a coyote howled dismally from the edge of the
mesa. For the most part there was no sound except the chuffing of the
horses' movements and the occasional ring of a hoof on the baked
ground.

The gray dawn, sifting into the sky, found them still traveling. The
mountains came closer, grew more definite. The desert flamed again,
dry, lifeless, torrid beneath a sky of turquoise. Dust eddies whirled in
inverted cones, wind devils playing in spirals across the sand.
Tablelands, mesas, wide plains, desolate lava stretches. Each in turn
was traversed by these lean, grim, bronzed riders.
They reached the foothills and left behind the desert shimmering in the
dancing heat. In a deep gorge, where the hill creases gave them shade,
the punchers threw off the trail, unsaddled, hobbled their horses, and
stole a few hours' sleep.
In the late afternoon they rode back to the trail through a draw, the
ponies wading fetlock deep in yellow, red, blue, and purple flowers.
The mountains across the valley looked in the dry heat as though made
of _papier-mâché_. Closer at hand the undulations of sand hills
stretched toward the pass for which they were making.
A mule deer started out of a dry wash and fled into the sunset light. The
long, stratified faces of rock escarpments caught the glow of the sliding
sun and became battlemented towers of ancient story.
The riders climbed steadily now, no longer engulfed in the ground
swell of land waves. They breathed an air like wine, strong, pure,
bracing. Presently their way led them into a hill pocket, which ran into
a gorge of piñons stretching toward Gunsight Pass.
The stars were out again when they looked down from the other side of
the pass upon the lights of Malapi.

CHAPTER V
SUPPER AT DELMONICO'S INTERRUPTED
The two D Bar Lazy R punchers ate supper at Delmonico's. The
restaurant was owned by Wong Chung. A Cantonese celestial did the

cooking and another waited on table. The price of a meal was
twenty-five cents, regardless of what one ordered.
Hop Lee, the waiter, grinned at the frolicsome youths with the serenity
of a world-old wisdom.
"Bleef steak, plork chop, lamb chop, hlam'neggs, clorn bleef hash,
Splanish stew," he chanted, reciting the bill of fare.
"Yes," murmured Bob.
The waiter said his piece again.
"Listens good to me," agreed Dave. "Lead it to us."
"You takee two--bleef steak and hlam'neggs, mebbe," suggested Hop
helpfully.
"Tha's right. Two orders of everything on the me-an-you, Charlie."
Hop did not argue with them. He never argued with a customer. If they
stormed at him he took refuge in a suddenly acquired lack of
understanding of English. If they called him Charlie or John or One
Lung, he accepted the name cheerfully and laid it to a racial mental
deficiency of the 'melicans. Now he decided to make a selection
himself.
"Vely well. Bleef steak and hlam'neggs."
"Fried potatoes done brown, John."
"Flied plotatoes. Tea or cloffee?"
"Coffee," decided Dave for both of them. "Warm mine."
"And custard pie," added Bob. "Made from this year's crop."
"Aigs sunny side up," directed his friend.

"Fry mine one on one side and one on the other," Hart continued
facetiously.
"Vely well." Hop Lee's impassive face betrayed no perplexity as he
departed. In the course