“Why don’t your dad sell her for beef?”

“Beef?” The boy laughed.  “Say, mister, I’d as soon try to chew leather.  They ain’t nothing but bones and skin and meanness to old Spot.  But she’s a good milker.  When she comes in fresh she gives pretty nigh onto four gallons a milking.”

“Is that so!”

“Sure is!  Hard to milk, though.  Kick the hat right off’n your head if you don’t watch her.  Never see such a fool cow as old Spot!  Hey!”

Taking advantage of this diversion in the attention of her guardian, Spot had ambled off to the side of the road.  The boy darted his horse after her and sent her trotting down the trail, with clicking hoofs and long, sweeping steps that scuffed up a stifling dust.

“Ain’t very good to heat a milker up by running ’em, son,” reproved Sinclair.

“I know it ain’t.  But it wouldn’t make me sorry if old Spot just nacherally dropped down dead—­she gives me that much trouble.  Look at her now, doggone her!”

Spot had turned broadside to them and waited for the boy to catch up before she would take another forward step.

“You just coming in to Sour Creek?”

“Yep, I’m strange to this town.”

“Well, you sure couldn’t have picked a more fussed-up time.”

“How come?”

“Well, you hear about the killing of Quade, I reckon?”

“Not a word.”

“You ain’t?  Where you been these days?”

“Oh, yonder in the hills.”

“Chipping rocks, eh?  Well, Quade was a gent that lived out the norm trail, and he had a fuss with the schoolteacher over Sally Bent, and the schoolteacher up and murders Quade, and they raise a posse and go out to hang Gaspar, the teacher, and they’re kept from it by a stranger called Sinclair; when the sheriff comes to get Gaspar and hang him legal and all, that Sinclair sticks up the sheriff and takes Gaspar away, and now they’re both outlawed, I hear tell, and they’s a price on their heads.”

The lad brought it out in one huge sentence, sputtering over the words in his haste.

“How much of a price?”

“I dunno.  It keeps growing.  Everybody around Woodville and Sour Creek is chipping in to raise that price.  They sure want to get Gaspar and Sinclair bad.  Gaspar ain’t much.  He’s a kind of sissy, but Sinclair is a killer—­and then some.”

Sinclair raised his head to the black, solemn mountains.  Then he looked back to his companion.

“Why, has he killed anybody lately?”

“He left one for dead right today!”

“You don’t mean it!  He sure must be bad.”

“Oh, he’s bad, right enough.  They was a gent named Cartwright come into town today with his head all banged up.  He’d met up with Gaspar and Sinclair in the hills, not knowing nothing about them.  Got into an argument with Sinclair, and, not being armed, he had it out with fists.  He was beating up Sinclair pretty bad—­him being a good deal of a man—­when Gaspar sneaks up and whangs him on the back of the head with the butt of his Colt.  They rode off and left him for dead.  But pretty soon he wakes up.  He comes on into Sour Creek, rarin’ and tearin’ and huntin’ for revenge.  Sure will be a bad mess if he meets up with Sinclair ag’in!”