Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/141

Rh watching every move as a child might watch a magician.

"How are you getting along with Thora, Red?" Sheridan asked him on their way back.

"I ain't gittin'," said Jackson with a whimsical glumness. "She allows I've never yit growed up."

"She's never seen you in action, Red."

"No, that's a fact." His tone was more hopeful. "How you gittin' along, Pete Sheridan?"

There was no suggestion of impertinence in the query. It would have been a strange one, back East, between master and man, Sheridan reflected. Out here it was between man and man—and better so.

"We're getting to be pretty good chums. Red," he answered.

"That's fine. They're sure two fine wimmen."

"They are. And it seems up to you and me. Red, to look out for them, as much as they'll allow us to do so. Want to go into a partnership on that?"

"You needn't draw the papers," Jackson drawled. "I'm hired on that job already."

Another half mile and he flung away his cigarette and cleared his throat. Sheridan waited expectantly, riding easily to the mare's elastic gait. He had not been obliged to come West to become a horseman. And he wondered what the song would be. When Jackson sang, all was well with his world. But it would surely be a minor strain, in inverse ratio to Red's inner mood. So it came.

As I walked down the streets of Laredo, As I walked out in Laredo one day,