"I won't," Buck answered. "I'm too darn comfortable."
"Well, good-by, then," she said briefly, moving over to her horse.
"Good-by; and--thank you a thousand times!"
She made no answer, but a faint, enigmatic smile quivered for an instant on her lips as she turned the stirrup and swung herself into the saddle. When Freckles had reached a little distance, she glanced back and waved her hand. From where he lay Stratton could see almost the whole length of the little cañon, and as long as the slight figure on the big gray horse remained in sight, his eyes followed her intently, a sort of wistful hunger in their depths. But when she disappeared, the man's head fell back limply on the blankets and his eyes closed.
Bud Jessup removed a battered stew-pan from the fire and set it aside to cool a little.
"Well, by this time I reckon friend Tex is all worked up over what's become of me," he remarked in a tone of satisfaction, deftly shifting the coffee-pot to a bed of deeper coals. "He's sure tried often enough to get rid of me, but I don't guess he quite relishes my droppin' out of sight like this."
Buck Stratton, his back resting comfortably against a rock a little way from the fire, nodded absently.
"You're sure you didn't leave any trace they could pick up?" he asked with a touch of anxiety.
"Certain sure," returned Jessup confidently. "When Miss Mary came in around four, I was in the wagon-shed, the rest of the crowd bein' down in south pasture. Like I told yuh before, she had a good-sized package all done up nice in her hand, an' it didn't take her long to tell me what was up. Then we walks out together an' stops by the kitchen door.
"'Yuh better get yore supper at the hotel,' she says, an' ride back afterwards. 'I meant to send in right after dinner to mail the package, but I got held up out on the range.'
"Then she seems to catch sight of the greaser for the first time jest inside the door, though I noticed him snoopin' there when we first come up.
"'I hope yuh got somethin' left from dinner, Pedro,' she says, with one of them careless natural smiles of hers, like as if she hadn't a care on her mind except food. 'I'm half starved.'"
Bud sighed and finished with a note of admiration. "Some girl, all right!"