Cabin Fever - Page 32/118

After awhile the high air currents flung aside the clouds like curtains

before a doorway. The sunlight flashed out dazzlingly and showed Bud

that the world, even this tumbled world, was good to look upon. His

instincts were all for the great outdoors, and from such the sun brings

quick response. Bud lifted his head, looked out over the hills to where

a bare plain stretched in the far distance, and went on more briskly.

He did not meet any one at all; but that was chiefly because he did not

want to meet any one. He went with his ears and his eyes alert, and was

not above hiding behind a clump of stunted bushes when two horsemen rode

down a canyon trail just below him. Also he searched for roads and then

avoided them. It would be a fat morsel for Marie and her mother to roll

under their tongues, he told himself savagely, if he were arrested and

appeared in the papers as one of that bunch of crooks!

Late that afternoon, by traveling steadily in one direction, he topped a

low ridge and saw an arm of the desert thrust out to meet him. A scooped

gully with gravelly sides and rocky bottom led down that way, and

because his feet were sore from so much sidehill travel, Bud went down.

He was pretty well fagged too, and ready to risk meeting men, if thereby

he might gain a square meal. Though he was not starving, or anywhere

near it, he craved warm food and hot coffee.

So when he presently came upon two sway-backed burros that showed the

sweaty imprint of packsaddles freshly removed, and a couple of horses

also sweat roughened, he straightway assumed that some one was making

camp not far away. One of the horses was hobbled, and they were all

eating hungrily the grass that grew along the gully's sides. Camp was

not only close, but had not yet reached suppertime, Bud guessed from the

well-known range signs.

Two or three minutes proved him right. He came upon a man just driving

the last tent peg. He straightened up and stared at Bud unblinkingly for

a few seconds.

"Howdy, howdy," he greeted him then with tentative friendliness, and

went on with his work. "You lost?" he added carefully. A man walking

down out of the barren hills, and carrying absolutely nothing in the

way of camp outfit, was enough to whet the curiosity of any one who knew

that country. At the same time curiosity that became too apparent

might be extremely unwelcome. So many things may drive a man into the

hills--but few of them would bear discussion with strangers.

"Yes. I am, and I ain't." Bud came up and stood with his hands in his

coat pockets, and watched the old fellow start his fire.