Even then he did not speak, but, freeing an arm slowly from the blanket folds, pointed toward the stable.
Grant looked, saw nothing, stared harder, and so; feeling sure there must be something hidden there, presently believed that a bit of the shadow at that end which was next the corral wavered, stopped, and then moved unmistakably.

All the front of the stable was distinctly visible in the white light, and, while they looked, something flitted across it, and disappeared among the sage beyond the trail.
Again they waited; two minutes, three minutes, five.

Then another shadow detached itself slowly from the shade of the stable, hesitated, walked out boldly, and crossed the white sand on the path to the house.
Baumberger it was, and he stopped midway to light his pipe, and so, puffing luxuriously, went on into the blackness of the grove.
They heard him step softly upon the porch, heard also the bovine sigh with which he settled himself in the armchair there.

They caught the aromatic odor of tobacco smoke ascending, and knew that his presence there had all at once become the most innocent, the most natural thing in the world; for any man, waking on such a night, needs no justification for smoking a nocturnal pipe upon the porch while he gazes dreamily out upon the moon-bathed world around him.
Peppajee touched Grant's arm, and turned back, skirting the poplars again until they were well away from the house, and there was no possibility of being heard.

He stopped there, and confronted the other.
"What for you no stoppum stable ?" he questioned bluntly.