So this resolution explained the light conveyance standing outside the store next morning. Power was in the act of settling himself as comfortably as might be beside the driven, when One-thumb Jake galloped down the slope leading from the Gulch. The cowboy pulled up in the approved style of his tribe, swung out of the saddle, and banged into the veranda a decrepit portmanteau, which he had been carrying in the thumbless hand.
"Room an' drink fer a single gent!" he shouted. "I'm an orfin, I am, a pore weak critter slung out inter a crool world!"
"You're never leaving the Willard outfit, Jake?" said Power, who might well be surprised, since the man had been connected with the Dolores ranch since the first lot of cattle was turned loose on its pastures.
"That's about the size of it," said the other.
"Wall, if you squeeze it outer me, I'll be squoze. In a sort of a way, it had ter do with you."
"Yes, sir. The boss says ter me yestiddy, 'Why is Derry Power hangin' roun' Mac's?' Says I, 'He bruk his leg.' 'Pity he didn't break his neck,' says the boss, an', seein' as you'se a friend of mine, I didn't agree with any sich sentiments, an' tole him the same. He kind o' curled up then; but this mornin' he gev me the perlite push,--said as he was quittin' Bison fer a spell, an' the ranch would be shut down. Anyways, Derry, I'm mighty glad ter see you hoppin' aroun'. Git down outer that rig, an' hev a sociable drink."
Power consulted his watch, and seemed to arrive at some decision on the spur of the moment.
"Can't wait now," he said. "You'll be here this evening?"
"Then I'll be around, and I may table a proposition that will please you. Jim," this to the driver, "beat it to the depot. I want to make the ten o'clock to Denver, and we have only twenty minutes."
MacGonigal, as usual a silent auditor, gazed after the cloud of dust raised by horse and buggy, and was minded, perhaps, to say something. Whatever may have been his first intent, he repressed it.
"What's yer pizen, Jake?" he inquired, and the cowboy named it.
Late that night Power returned. He was so tired that he had practically to be carried to bed; but he contrived to tell the storekeeper that Jake should remain in Bison at his (Power's) expense until certain business conditions had developed. Next day he was too exhausted to take any exercise; but sat in the veranda after breakfast, smoking and chatting with the habitués, whose varied surmises he shared, when a stranger whizzed through the township in the buggy, vanished in the direction of the Gulch, and returned with equal celerity of movement a couple of hours subsequently.