Anyway, we can play
together, and have real good times."
Bud had an odd feeling that Honey was talking one thing with
her lips, and thinking an entirely different set of thoughts.
He eyed her covertly while he untied the cases, and he could
have sworn that he saw her signal someone behind the lace
curtains of the nearest window. He glanced carelessly that
way, but the curtains were motionless. Honey was holding out
her hands for the guitar and the mandolin when he turned,
so Bud surrendered them and went on to the corrals.
He did not return to the house. An old man was pottering
around a machine shed that stood backed against a thick
fringe of brush, and when Bud rode by he left his work and
came after him, taking short steps and walking with his back
bent stiffly forward and his hands swinging limply at his
sides.
He had a long black beard streaked with gray, and sharp blue
eyes set deep under tufted white eyebrows. He seemed a
friendly old man whose interest in life remained keen as in
his youth, despite the feebleness of his body. He showed Bud
where to turn the horses, and went to work on the pack rope,
his crooked old fingers moving with the sureness of lifelong
habit. He was eager to know all the news that Bud could tell
him, and when he discovered that Bud had just left the
Muleshoe, and that he had been fired because of a fight with
Dirk Tracy, the old fellow cackled gleefully
"Well, now, I guess you just about had yore hands full, young
man," he commented shrewdly.
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