Page:Frederick Faust--Free Range Lanning.djvu/242

238 in the recklessness with which he sent Sally up the slope away from the ranch house this night.

He had made up his mind immediately to hunt out a "safe" man, recently mentioned to him by that unconscionable scapegrace Harry Woods, crooked gambler, thief of small and large, and whilom murderer. The man's name was Garry Baldwin, a small rancher, some half day's ride above Sullivan's place in the valley. He was recommended as a man of silence. In that direction Andrew took his way, but, coming in the hills to a dished-out place on a hillside, where there was a natural shelter from both wind and rain, he stopped there for the rest of the night, cooked a meal, rolled himself in his blankets, and slept into the gray of the morning. No sooner was the first light streaking the horizon to the east than Andrew wakened, and wakened in instant possession of all his faculties; he had gained a Napoleonic power to take his sleep whenever and wherever he chose, and wake refreshed and ready for a new start. He could sleep as a camel eats. If opportunity offered he could spend a dozen hours wrapped in oblivion and then go forty-eight hours freshly without a new rest. Of all the rare qualities of hand and eye and mind which equipped Andrew Lanning for his hard life, there was nothing half so valuable as this command over sleep. The heartbreaking ride from Los Toros, which would have reduced another man to a tangle of nerves and weariness, left him as fresh as a bird. One sleep was all he needed to wipe his mind clean as a slate of the past.

He saddled Sally this morning, and, after a leisurely breakfast, started at a jog trot through the hills, taking the upslope with the utmost care. For nothing so ruins a horse as hard work uphill at the very beginning of the