noon
Presently Bud came in , parried with some success the half-questioning comments of the men , and went to bed . Buck lay awake a while longer , trying to patch together into some semblance of pattern the isolated scraps of information he had gained , but without any measure of success . There followed four surprising days of calm , during which the Shoe-Bar , to every outward seeming , might have been the most ordinary and humdrum of outfits , with not a hint of anything sinister or mysterious beneath the surface . Each morning the men sallied forth to work , returned for noon dinner , and rode off again soon afterward . Lynch was neither grouchy nor over-jovial . He seemed the typical ranch-boss , whose chief thought is to get the work done , and his berating was entirely impartial . Bud had spent most of his time around the ranch , but once or twice he rode out with the others , and there was no attempt on their part to keep him and Buck from talking together as privately as they pleased .