"The journey," said Anthony, "is pretty tiresome through monotonous scenery like this."
The little keen eyes surveyed him a moment before the man spoke.
"There was buffalo on them plains once."
If someone had said to an ignorant questioner, "This little knoll is called Bunker Hill," he could not have been more abashed than was Anthony, who glanced through the window at the dreary prospect, looked back again, and found that the sharp eyes once more looked straight ahead without the slightest light of triumph in his coup. Silence, apparently, did not in the least abash this man.
"Know a good deal about buffaloes?"
"Yes."
It was not the insulting curtness of one who wishes to be left in peace, but simply a statement of bald fact.
"Really?" queried Anthony. "I didn"t think you were as old as that!"
It appeared that this remark was worthy of no answer whatever. The little man turned his attention to his order of ham and eggs, cut off the first egg, manoeuvred it carefully into position on his knife, and raised it toward a mouth that stretched to astonishing proportions; but at the critical moment the egg slipped and flopped back on the plate.
"Missed!" said Anthony.
He couldn"t help it; the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n popped out of its own accord. The other regarded him with grave displeasure.
"If you had your bead drawed an" somebody jogged your arm jest as you pulled the trigger, would you call it a miss?"
"Excuse me. I"ve no doubt you"re extremely accurate."
"I ne"er miss," said the other, and proved it by disposing of the egg at the next imposing mouthful.
"I should like to know you. My name is Anthony Bard."
"I"m Marty Wilkes. H"ware ye?"
They shook hands.
"Westerner, Mr. Wilkes?"
"This is my furthest East."
"Have a pleasant time?"
A gesture indicated the barren, brown waste of prairie.
"Too much civilization."
"Really?"
"Even the cattle got no fight in "em." He added, "That sounds like I"m a fighter. I ain"t."
"Till you"re stirred up, Mr. Wilkes?"
"Heat me up an" I"ll burn. Soil wood."
"You"re pretty familiar with the Western country?"
"I get around."
"Perhaps you"d recognize this."
He took a scroll from his breast pocket and unrolled the photograph of the forest and the ranchhouse with the two mountains in the distance.
Wilkes considered it unperturbed.
"Them are the Little Brothers."
"Ah! Then all I have to do is to travel to the foot of the Little Brothers?"
"No, about sixty miles from "em." "Impossible! Why, the mountains almost overhang that house."
Wilkes handed back the picture and resumed his eating without reply. It was not a sullen resentment; it was hunger and a lack of curiosity. He was not "heated up."
"Any one," said Anthony, to lure the other on, "could see that."
"Sure; any one with bad eyes."
"But how can you tell it"s sixty miles?"
"I"ve been there."
"Well, at least the big tree there and the ranchhouse will not be very hard to find. But I suppose I"ll have to travel in a circle around the Little Brothers, keeping a sixty-mile radius?"
"If you want to waste a pile of time. Yes."
"I suppose you could lead me right to the spot?"
"I could."
"How?"
"That"s about fifty-five miles straight north-east of the Little Brothers."
"How the devil can you tell that, man?"
"That ain"t hard. They"s a pretty steady north wind that blows in them parts. It"s cold and it"s strong. Now when you been out there long enough and get the idea that the only things that live is because G.o.d loves "em. Mostly it"s jest plain sand and rock. The trees live because they got protection from that north wind. Nature puts moss on "em on the north side to shelter "em from that same wind. Look at that picture close. You see that rough place on the side of that tree--jest a shadow like the whiskers of a man that ain"t shaved for a week? That"s the moss. Now if that"s north, the rest is easy. That place is north-east of the Little Brothers."
"By Jove! how did you get such eyes?"
"Used "em."
"The reason I"d like to find the house is because--"
"Reasons ain"t none too popular with me."