CHAPTER FOUR

A THING THAT SETS LIKE A HAWK


Six days are not many when they are lived with companions and the
numberless details of one's everyday occupation. They may seem a month if
you pass them in jail, or in waiting for some great event,--or at
Sinkhole Camp, down near the Border.

Three days of the six Johnny spent in familiarizing himself with the two
or three detached horse herds that watered along the meager little stream
that sunk finally under a ledge and was seen no more in Arizona. He
counted the horses as best he could while they loitered at their watering
places, and he noticed where they fed habitually--also that they ranged
far and usually came in to water in the late afternoon or closer to dusk,
when the yellow-jackets that swarmed along the muddy banks of the stream
did not worry them so much, nor the flies that were a torment.

He reported by telephone to his employer, who seemed relieved to know
that everything was so quiet and untroubled down at that end of his
range. And once, quite inadvertently, he reported to Mary V; or was going
to, when he recognized a feminine note in the masculine gruffness that
spoke over the wire. And when she found he had discovered her:

"Oh, Johnny! I've thought of another verse!" she began animatedly.

Johnny hung up, and although the telephone rang twice after that he would
not answer. It seemed to him that Mary V had very little to do, harping
away still at that subject. He had been secretly a bit homesick for the