Page:Owen Wister - The Virginian.djvu/436

Rh the comfort which had been mine since we left the cottonwoods out of sight down in the plain. Hence I called out sharply, "What's the matter now?" when the Virginian suddenly stopped his horse again.

He looked down at the trail, and then he very slowly turned round in his saddle and stared back steadily at me. "There's two of them," he said.

"Two what?"

"I don't know."

"You must know whether it's two horses or two men," I said, almost angrily.

But to this he made no answer, sitting quite still on his horse and contemplating the ground. The silence was fastening on me like a spell, and I spurred my horse impatiently forward to see for myself. The footprints of two men were there in the trail.

"What do you say to that?" said the Virginian. "Kind of ridiculous, ain't it?"

"Very quaint," I answered, groping for the explanation. There was no rock here to walk over and step from into the softer trail. These second steps came more out of the air than the first. And my brain played me the evil trick of showing me a dead man in a gray flannel shirt.

"It's two, you see, travelling with one hawss, and they take turns riding him."

"Why, of course!" I exclaimed; and we went along for a few paces.

"There you are," said the Virginian, as the trail proved him right. "Number one has got on. My God, what's that?"

At a crashing in the woods very close to us we