Even the
cowpunchers, when they came to the gate, talked softly. But still the
master did not come. Two weeks dragged on, weary weeks of waiting, and
then the door to the house opened and again they carried him out on
a wicker couch, a pale and wasted figure, around whom the man on the
crutches and the girl and half a dozen cowpunchers gathered laughing
and talking all at once.
"Stand back from him, now," ordered Marianne, "and watch Alcatraz."
So they drew away under the arcade and Alcatraz heard the voice of the
master calling weakly.
It was not well that the others should be so near. For how could one
tell from what hand a rope might be thrown or in what hand a gun might
suddenly flash? But still the voice called and Alcatraz went slowly,
snorting his protest and suspicion, until he stood at the foot of the
couch and stretching forth his nose, still with his frightened glance
fixed on the watchers, Alcatraz sniffed the hand of Red Jim. It
turned. It patted him gently. It drew his gaze away from the others
and into the eyes of this one man, the mysterious eyes which
understood so much.
"A lone trail is right enough for a while, old boy," Red Jim was
saying, "but in the end we need partners, a man and a woman and a
horse and a man.
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