A sudden sense of his own unworthiness brought unwonted humility into his heart. Ashley Westcott had never before, in his grown-up life, been so near to feeling a noble impulse.
“Miss Anderson,” he said, “I’m afraid I should never come up to any ideal of yours; but I aim to do as near right as I know how.”
They were at the corrals now, where the cattleman, who had drawn ahead, was already talking to Sandy Larch about some young horses that were to be got ready for shipment east, before spring. Polo ponies from the Palo Verde enjoyed a good market back in “The States.”
In one of the corrals the future work-cattle were penned, half a dozen head, lean, leggy brutes, wild-eyed and ugly. They kept together, moving restlessly about in a bunch, watching the visitors sullenly, and occasionally lunging at one another with wide, wicked horns.
“They’re beauts, for fair,” Sandy Larch remarked, “Only they can’t seem to make up their minds to look it in public. They’re that kind o’ modest vi’lets.”
“’Twon’t be exactly a Sunday school picnic to break them in,” Westcott remarked, looking them over.
“Sure it will,” said Sandy, impressively. “Why them cows will be door-yard pets, once they’re handled. Their bad looks is just a yearning for appreciation. That one, now—”
He tossed a little clod into the blazed face of one huge steer that had moved a little apart from the others. It was a vicious-looking brute, and stood lowing, sullenly.
“That there blaze-faced cow’ll be coaxing fer sugar out’n your hand in a week’s time, Miss Helen,” Sandy declared. “Can’t you see it in his eye?”
Helen could not see it, and said so, frankly. A cowboy, minded to reach the further corral, where the young horses were, sprang down into the enclosure with the cattle, and started across.