Jim asked how long it was since they met that day on the range.
"It seems a year to you, eh, lad? That was six days ago, the way I reckon time."
"So much has happened--sir--can it be less than a week? I was only a boy then--and Curly----"
"Yo' goin' to remember to speak of Curly as a boy. He is allooded to as a boy, or I get hawstile. You understand that?"
"And now," says McCalmont, "we'll have that buckboard ready in case we need to pull out."
There was a buckboard standing in the yard, the same being a four-wheel dogtrap, with a springy floor of boards, easy for travel. Jim helped McCalmont to stow some cases and a keg of water, fill sacks with sweet range hay for Curly's bed, and then cover the whole with a canvas ground-sheet.
"You think," says Jim, "that we'll be chased to-night?"
"I dunno, Jim, but it looks to me as that's how the herd is grazing."
When supper was ready they strayed across to the fire and joined issue with beef, hot bread, and coffee, the same being taken serious without waste of time or talk. We range-folk don't interrupt our teeth with aimless discourse. By smoke-time Buck loped off in the dusk to find the _remuda_ of ponies out at grass, and the boys had a cigarette while he gathered, watered, and drove the ponies home. Then the team for the buckboard was caught, harnessed, and tied up with a feed of corn; each man roped and saddled his night horse; and Buck, with the three relief men, rode out slow, curving away into the starlight.
McCalmont roped a sorrel mare for Jim, then found him a spare saddle, a bridle, a blanket, belt, gun, and spurs.
"Now," says he, "jest bed yo'self down, but don't undress. Keep yo' hawss to hand, sleep rapid, and in case of alarm jump quick. An outlaw's bed, my son, ain't feathered for long sleeps."
Jim lay awake and watched until the day guard came loping in with Buck. He saw them rope and saddle their remounts, catch their supper, bed down, and smoke the final cigarette. It all felt homely and good to be with cowboys again, to have his blanket on the dust, his horse and gun beside him, to know he was free and moderately safe, to look up drowsy at a great white sky of stars. Jim was a plainsman in those days sure enough, content, range fashion, to have the whole earth for a bed, the night for a bedroom, and the starry palace of the Great Spirit to shelter him while he slept. Kings and emperors and such have to hole up at night in mean quarters compared with that.