“So long, old timer,” he called, slapping
Silent on the shoulder, “I’ll be seein’
you agin before long.”
Calder’s men looked up with curious eyes.
Hardy watched Silent swing onto his horse and gallop
down the street. Then he went hurriedly back
to his office. Once inside he dropped into the
big swivel-chair, buried his face in his arms, and
wept like a child.
PARTNERS
Dust powdered his hat and clothes as Tex Calder trotted
his horse north across the hills. His face was
a sickly grey, and his black hair might have been
an eighteenth century wig, so thoroughly was it disguised.
It had been a long ride. Many a long mile wound
back behind him, and still the cattle pony, with hanging
head, stuck to its task. Now he was drawing out
on a highland, and below him stretched the light yellow-green
of the willows of the bottom land. He halted his
pony and swung a leg over the horn of his saddle.
Then he rolled a cigarette, and while he inhaled it
in long puffs he scanned the trees narrowly.
Miles across, and stretching east and west farther
than his eye could reach, extended the willows.
Somewhere in that wilderness was the gang of Jim Silent.
An army corps might have been easily concealed there.
If he was not utterly discouraged in the beginning
of his search, it was merely because the rangers of
the hills and plains are taught patience almost as
soon as they learn to ride a horse. He surveyed
the yellow-green forest calmly. In the west the
low hanging sun turned crimson and bulged at the sides
into a clumsy elipse. He started down the slope
at the same dog-trot which the pony had kept up all
day. Just before he reached the skirts of the
trees he brought his horse to a sudden halt and threw
back his head. It seemed to him that he heard
a faint whistling.
He could not be sure. It was so far off and unlike
any whistling he had ever heard before, that he half
guessed it to be the movement of a breeze through
the willows, but the wind was hardly strong enough
to make this sound. For a full five minutes he
listened without moving his horse. Then came
the thing for which he waited, a phrase of melody
undoubtedly from human lips.
What puzzled him most was the nature of the music.
As he rode closer to the trees it grew clearer.
It was unlike any song he had ever heard. It
was a strange improvisation with a touch of both melancholy
and savage exultation running through it. Calder
found himself nodding in sympathy with the irregular
rhythm.
It grew so clear at last that he marked with some
accuracy the direction from which it came. If
this was Silent’s camp, it must be strongly
guarded, and he should approach the place more cautiously
than he could possibly do on a horse. Accordingly
he dismounted, threw the reins over the pony’s
head, and started on through the willows. The
whistling became louder and louder. He moved stealthily
