“They must mean Wild Bill,” said a voice.
“No, his name is McMasters—Dan McMasters. But he ain’t with them now. Besides that, they got something else; you can’t guess. They’ve got a woman!”
“Yes, they have. Young woman, too, and prettier’n any picture you ever saw in a frame. She owns all the herd. She’s rich as she is pretty. Her name’s Lockhart, Miss Lockhart from Caldwell, County, Texas, but not Caldwell, Kansas, gentlemen. She owns the Del Sol ranch down there. They raised this whole herd on that ranch; or anyhow that’s what they say. Men, here’s to Miss Anastasie Lockhart, the finest girl in the world and the first one up the Texas trail!”
Two men of the crowd who had been listening quietly stepped out at the door, looking at one another but not speaking. They passed close at hand; the future town marshal of Abilene and his deputy.
[Illustration: _A Paramount Picture._ _North of 36._ RUDABAUGH (NOAH BEERY) AND DAN McMASTERS (JACK HOLT).]
FOR the last two hundred miles of the long trail up from Texas, life was less eventful for the Del Sol men. The cattle now were shaken down to the daily routine of marching and gave little or no trouble. They took the smaller streams almost in their stride; and as to the last large waterway, no problem of note existed, for at the Arkansas River, the trail maker, Jesse Chisholm, again had provided passage in the scow he had left moored not far from Wichita after it had served his own purposes. It was merely a procession north of the Arkansas to Abilene, across beautifully undulating country whose attractiveness would have been hard to match in all America.
Arrived now at the Solomon River, however, almost at the environs of Abilene, they found that civilization had prepared a bridge—the first and only bridge of the entire journey of perhaps a thousand miles. It was a structure of raw pine, well meant enough, but done by men in ignorance of the actual nature of Texas steers. It served well enough for the carts, but the herd would have none of it and insisted on swimming, as they had crossed so many other streams. It was after they had crossed that, yielding to the supplications of McCoyne, a halt was called until the latter could go into town and complete certain arrangements of his own. He asked Nabours to bring on the herd later.