"Where the devil have you been?" inquired Kreeger, surprised out of his accustomed taciturnity.
"I thought yuh was asleep," added Peters, casting a bewildered glance at the shadowy bunk.
Buck, who had scarcely hoped his little stratagem would succeed so well, refrained with difficulty from showing the pleasure he felt.
"But I thought yuh was in yore bunk," commented McCabe, his light-blue eyes narrowing slightly.
"No, I was outside," explained Stratton carelessly. "It was too hot in here, so I went out and sat down by the creek. I must have dropped off pretty soon, and when I came to it was dark."
As he spoke he glanced casually at Tex Lynch, and despite himself a little shiver flickered on his spine. The foreman, who had not spoken, sat motionless on the further side of the table regarding Stratton steadily. His lids drooped slightly and his face was almost expressionless. But in spite of that Buck got a momentary impression of baffled fury and a deadly, murderous hate, the more startling because of its very repression. Coupling it with what he knew or suspected of the man, Stratton felt there was some excuse for that momentary mental shrinking.
"He'd as soon put me out of the way as shoot a coyote," he said to himself, as he walked over to his bunk. "All he wants is a chance to do it without getting caught."
But with ordinary care and caution he did not see just how Tex was going to get the chance. Buck never went anywhere without his gun, and he flattered himself he was as quick on the draw as the average. Besides, he knew better now than to trust himself alone with Lynch or any of the others on some outlying part of the range where a fatal accident could plausibly be laid to marauding greasers, or to some similar agency.
"I'm not saying any one of 'em couldn't pick me off a dozen times a day and make an easy get-away across the border," he thought, stretching himself out on the husk mattress. "But Lynch don't want to have to make a get-away. There's something right here on the Shoe-Bar that interests him a whole lot too much."
Presently Bud came in, parried with some success the half-questioning comments of the men, and went to bed. Buck lay awake a while longer, trying to patch together into some semblance of pattern the isolated scraps of information he had gained, but without any measure of success.