Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/160

 as if one were the concomitant of the other. Had she got cockleburs in it, or had she been sick with a depilating fever? Perhaps neither. Very likely, independent and precedent-setting young lady that she was, she had cut it off because, like trousers and boots, it was easier to get around with when she worked about the place.

One would think that girls on cow-ranches would cut off their hair right along, considering the riding and wild-flying tresses he had seen. But not so: in all his experience with girls of cow-ranches he could recall but one other who wore her hair short like Eudora Ellison. That was black curly hair, also, but the wearer of it was not slim and shapely. Rather squat and thick-ankled, like a squaw. Johnson was her name—strange if she should turn out to be Waco's sister, which was improbable, considering that she had no brother—Fanny Johnson, called Buffalo for reasons unknown. Away up on the muddy North Platte in Wyoming; the dingy, low-banked, thick-running, swirling, roiling, unlovely, melancholy North Platte.

They had gone in for sheep later, the Johnsons. Buffalo was living in a sheep wagon the last time he saw her. He had been following a bunch of stolen cattle, the trail leading to the river, and the end of those beeves as far as he ever knew.

In that way of past mingling with present and future, Tom rode on with his comfortable thoughts, serene, happy. He had a feeling that he was coming into peaceful waters after a rough voyage, his long watches and hard riding at an end. He could see no farther into a wall, to be certain, than the last man to ride that road ahead of him, or the next one following behind.