Page:Son of the wind.djvu/42

 into his chair again, withdrew his fingers from the leaves of a book, and by that motion seemed to relinquish all hope of waving his visitor aside. The lamp on the desk between them lighted the two men to each other, the scholar leaning a little forward, looking puzzled, but scarcely curious.

Carron knew he was in for it now, on the instant. All his plans for approaching his question gradually, through the common ground of similar interests, hunting and the activities of mountaineers, vanished. It was across a gulf of widely differing thought that he must pitch his question at the scholar, the more flatly the better to hold the attention that seemed each moment to be at the point of deserting him.

"It's not quite a piece of business I want to talk to you about," he said. "It is a favor I want to ask of you. There has been a rumor through the Sacramento Valley, and through the mining towns below here of a stallion at large among these mountains."

Rader's high eyebrows flickered, and his head moved a little forward on his long neck. It was only an intensifying of his look of polite attentiveness. "A horse you have lost?"

It forced a reluctant smile out of Carron. "No, Mr. Rader, not a horse that any one has lost; a horse that has never been found; a horse that I very much