"I ’m sorry to leave you, Hopalong," he said earnestly; "but you know how it is: I ’ve been away quite a spell and things happen quick out here. You ’ll see me again this Summer an’ I ’ll come to stay if you want me. Mary, I ’m mighty glad to see he ’s got such a good foreman—he ’s needed one a long time; an’ I can see a big improvement in him already."
"Reckon you might profit by the example—must be girls a-plenty out in this country who ’d make good foremen," she replied, laughing.
Tex’s face showed no trace of hurt as the chance arrow sped to the mark; he laughed, pointing at Johnny. "I reckon there are; but the Kid would n’t give me no show."
"We ’ll answer for him, Tex," chuckled Red. "We cured him once before an’ we ’d be shore glad to do it again."
"Yep—kept him in the hills, starvin’ an’ freezin’ for a whole month," sweetly added Skinny.
Johnny flushed and squirmed but had no time to retort, Pete and the others being too busy talking to Tex to let him be heard. Finally Tex backed off, raised his hat, and with a bow and a smile to Mary, wheeled and loped off along the trail to run Spring a race to Montana. Every time he looked back he waved in answer to his friends, and then, swiftly mounting a rise, was silhouetted for an instant against the white clouds on the horizon and as swiftly dropped from sight, a faint chorus of yells reaching him.
The outfit turned slowly to return to their ranch and when they missed their foreman, they saw him sitting silent where they had left him, his wife’s hand on his arm. He could still see Tex against the sky, clear cut, startlingly strong and potent, and he nodded his head slowly. "He ’s needed up there, an’ he ’s the best man to go." Turning, he was surprised to find his wife so near and he smiled joyously: "Wouldn’t go an’ leave me all alone, would you, Honey? Yo ’re shore a thoroughbred an’ I ’m plumb proud of you. Race you to th’ bunch!"
If any man of the Bar-20 punchers had been brought face to face with George McAllister he would have suffered the shock of his life. "Frenchy?" he would have hesitated, "What in—? Why, Frenchy?" And the shock would have been mutual, since Frenchy McAllister had been dead some months, a fact of which his brother George was sorrowfully aware. Yet so alike were they that any of Frenchy’s old friends would have thought the dead come to life.