"This is the last year of her," d.i.c.k announced. "She's indomitable.

I've worked two years on her without the slightest improvement. She knows me, knows my ways, knows I am her master, knows when she has to give in, but is never satisfied. She nourishes the perennial hope that some time she'll catch me napping, and for fear she'll miss that time she never lets any time go by."

"And some time she may catch you," Paula said.

"That's why I'm giving her up. It isn't exactly a strain on me, but soon or late she's bound to get me if there's anything in the law of probability. It may be a million-to-one shot, but heaven alone knows where in the series of the million that fatal one is going to pop up."

"You're a wonder, Red Cloud," Paula smiled.

"Why?"

"You think in statistics and percentages, averages and exceptions. I wonder, when we first met, what particular formula you measured me up by."

"I'll be darned if I did," he laughed back. "There was where all signs failed. I didn't have a statistic that applied to you. I merely acknowledged to myself that here was the most wonderful female woman ever born with two good legs, and I knew that I wanted her more than I had ever wanted anything. I just had to have her--"

"And got her," Paula completed for him. "But since, Red Cloud, since.

Surely you've acc.u.mulated enough statistics on me."

"A few, quite a few," he admitted. "But I hope never to get the last one--"

He broke off at sound of the unmistakable nicker of Mountain Lad. The stallion appeared, the cowboy on his back, and d.i.c.k gazed for a moment at the perfect action of the beast's great swinging trot.

"We've got to get out of this," he warned, as Mountain Lad, at sight of them, broke into a gallop.

Together they p.r.i.c.ked their mares, whirled them about, and fled, while from behind they heard the soothing "Whoas" of the rider, the thuds of the heavy hoofs on the roadway, and a wild imperative neigh. The Outlaw answered, and the Fawn was but a moment behind her. From the commotion they knew Mountain Lad was getting tempestuous.

Leaning to the curve, they swept into a cross-road and in fifty paces pulled up, where they waited till the danger was past.

"He's never really injured anybody yet," Paula said, as they started back.

"Except when he casually stepped on Cowley's toes. You remember he was laid up in bed for a month," d.i.c.k reminded her, straightening out the Outlaw from a sidle and with a flicker of glance catching the strange look with which Paula was regarding him.

There was question in it, he could see, and love in it, and fear--yes, almost fear, or at least apprehension that bordered on dismay; but, most of all, a seeking, a searching, a questioning. Not entirely ungermane to her mood, was his thought, had been that remark of his thinking in statistics.

But he made that he had not seen, whipping out his pad, and, with an interested glance at a culvert they were pa.s.sing, making a note.

"They missed it," he said. "It should have been repaired a month ago."

"What has become of all those Nevada mustangs?" Paula inquired.

This was a flyer d.i.c.k had taken, when a bad season for Nevada pasture had caused mustangs to sell for a song with the alternative of starving to death. He had shipped a trainload down and ranged them in his wilder mountain pastures to the west.

"It's time to break them," he answered. "And I'm thinking of a real old-fashioned rodeo next week. What do you say? Have a barbecue and all the rest, and invite the country side?"

"And then you won't be there," Paula objected.

"I'll take a day off. Is it a go?"

They reined to one side of the road, as she agreed, to pa.s.s three farm tractors, all with their trailage of ganged discs and harrows.

"Moving them across to the Rolling Meadows," he explained. "They pay over horses on the right ground."

Rising from the home valley, pa.s.sing through cultivated fields and wooded knolls, they took a road busy with many wagons hauling road-dressing from the rock-crusher they could hear growling and crunching higher up.

"Needs more exercise than I've been giving her," d.i.c.k remarked, jerking the Outlaw's bared teeth away from dangerous proximity to the Fawn's flank.

"And it's disgraceful the way I've neglected Duddy and Fuddy," Paula said. "I've kept their feed down like a miser, but they're a lively handful just the same."

d.i.c.k heard her idly, but within forty-eight hours he was to remember with hurt what she had said.

They continued on till the crunch of the rock-crusher died away, penetrated a belt of woodland, crossed a tiny divide where the afternoon sunshine was wine-colored by the manzanita and rose-colored by madronos, and dipped down through a young planting of eucalyptus to the Little Meadow. But before they reached it, they dismounted and tied their horses. d.i.c.k took the .22 automatic rifle from his saddle-holster, and with Paula advanced softly to a clump of redwoods on the edge of the meadow. They disposed themselves in the shade and gazed out across the meadow to the steep slope of hill that came down to it a hundred and fifty yards away.

"There they are--three--four of them," Paula whispered, as her keen eyes picked the squirrels out amongst the young grain.

These were the wary ones, the sports in the direction of infinite caution who had shunned the poisoned grain and steel traps of d.i.c.k's vermin catchers. They were the survivors, each of a score of their fellows not so cautious, themselves fit to repopulate the hillside.

d.i.c.k filled the chamber and magazine with tiny cartridges, examined the silencer, and, lying at full length, leaning on his elbow, sighted across the meadow. There was no sound of explosion when he fired, only the click of the mechanism as the bullet was sped, the empty cartridge ejected, a fresh cartridge flipped into the chamber, and the trigger re-c.o.c.ked. A big, dun-colored squirrel leaped in the air, fell over, and disappeared in the grain. d.i.c.k waited, his eye along the rifle and directed toward several holes around which the dry earth showed widely as evidence of the grain which had been destroyed. When the wounded squirrel appeared, scrambling across the exposed ground to safety, the rifle clicked again and he rolled over on his side and lay still.

At the first click, every squirrel but the stricken one, had made into its burrow. Remained nothing to do but wait for their curiosity to master caution. This was the interval d.i.c.k had looked forward to. As he lay and scanned the hillside for curious heads to appear, he wondered if Paula would have something to say to him. In trouble she was, but would she keep this trouble to herself? It had never been her way.

Always, soon or late, she brought her troubles to him. But, then, he reflected, she had never had a trouble of this nature before. It was just the one thing that she would be least p.r.o.ne to discuss with him.

On the other hand, he reasoned, there was her everlasting frankness. He had marveled at it, and joyed in it, all their years together. Was it to fail her now?

So he lay and pondered. She did not speak. She was not restless. He could hear no movement. When he glanced to the side at her he saw her lying on her back, eyes closed, arms outstretched, as if tired.

A small head, the color of the dry soil of its home, peeped from a hole. d.i.c.k waited long minutes, until, a.s.sured that no danger lurked, the owner of the head stood full up on its hind legs to seek the cause of the previous click that had startled it. Again the rifle clicked.

"Did you get him?" Paula queried, without opening her eyes.

"Yea, and a fat one," d.i.c.k answered. "I stopped a line of generations right there."

An hour pa.s.sed. The afternoon sun beat down but was not uncomfortable in the shade. A gentle breeze fanned the young grain into lazy wavelets at times, and stirred the redwood boughs above them. d.i.c.k added a third squirrel to the score. Paula's book lay beside her, but she had not offered to read.

"Anything the matter?" he finally nerved himself to ask.

"No; headache--a beastly little neuralgic hurt across the eyes, that's all."

"Too much embroidery," he teased.

"Not guilty," was her reply.

All was natural enough in all seeming; but d.i.c.k, as he permitted an unusually big squirrel to leave its burrow and crawl a score of feet across the bare earth toward the grain, thought to himself: No, there will be no talk between us this day. Nor will we nestle and kiss lying here in the gra.s.s.

His victim was now at the edge of the grain. He pulled trigger. The creature fell over, lay still a moment, then ran in quick awkward fashion toward its hole. Click, click, click, went the mechanism. Puffs of dust leaped from the earth close about the fleeing squirrel, showing the closeness of the misses. d.i.c.k fired as rapidly as he could twitch his forefinger on the trigger, so that it was as if he played a stream of lead from a hose.

He had nearly finished refilling the magazine when Paula spoke.

"My! What a fusillade.--Get him?"

"Yea, grandfather of all squirrels, a mighty graineater and destroyer of sustenance for young calves. But nine long smokeless cartridges on one squirrel doesn't pay. I'll have to do better."