* * * * *

A few moments of silence followed the old cow-puncher’s story.  In reciting this page from the book of his life he had lost thought of his surroundings, but now he remembered, and seemed startled at having talked so much.  He retired within himself, his eyes taking on an introspective look as though, as one of the boys expressed it, “he was tellin’ stories t’ himself.”

He paid no heed to the comments the men made on his story of the Custer fight.  It had impressed them because it had rung true.  The comments were made in murmurs or whispers.  As Injun had sat during the tale he sat now; stolid, expressionless.  Now and then Whitey stole a look at him.  In his mind Whitey was connecting the old puncher’s story with the one Injun had told in the bunk house at the Bar O, and with what Bill Jordan had said afterwards; that Injun had revealed the start or source of the greatest Indian fight the country ever knew.

It had been a hard day, and one by one the men dropped off to sleep, until only Whitey and the old puncher were left, he rolling an occasional cigarette, and living in that past which the events of the night had brought back to him.  Whitey realized this, and had to admit that it was a pretty exciting place in which to live.  And he wondered if the old puncher would like to have another page in his book of life; a sort of explanatory page, like the key in an arithmetic.

It was almost dark in the tent.  Only one lighted lantern hung from a pole.  And in low tones, so as not to disturb the sleepers, Whitey told the old man the story of Injun’s mamma’s brother and his friend the scout; and of the White Chief, and the dance, and the arrest and the escape; and of Injun’s father’s resolve that “we fight heap!”

The old puncher didn’t know who these Indians were of whom Whitey was talking, but he listened politely at first and interestedly at last.  And when Whitey had finished the story, he added, “Injun’s uncle was old Rain-in-the-Face, and he was a great friend of Charlie Reynolds, the scout.”

Then Whitey crept off to bed, and allowed the old man to figure out in his mind—­as Bill Jordan had done—­the start of “the doggonedest Injun fight this country ever knowed!” And far into the night the old cowpuncher thought of this other page, added to the book that was to entertain him as he went down the steeper side of the hill of life.

CHAPTER XXI

UNREST

The second and last week of the threshing at the Hanley Ranch was well on its way, and nothing had occurred to break the routine of hard work in the daytime and nights spent in a tent, in an atmosphere laden with tobacco smoke and the yarns of rough men.

The boys had not succeeded in confirming their suspicions against Henry Dorgan, and if Dorgan felt any resentment against them, or against the old cowpuncher who had defended them, he failed to show it.