“How’s that?” Broome’s tone was incredulous.
“Why didn’t you tap the nigger-head there by the barranca?” his companion asked.
“What—the big cactus like a green punkin? What for?” Broome demanded, and Gard explained the nature of the bisnaga. If he had cut off the top he would probably have found a quart or two of water. Broome listened with curious intentness, and when the other had finished, broke into a torrent of execration.
He cursed the desert in its nearness and its remoteness, inclusively and particularly, for several moments, until presently words seemed to fail him, and the torrent of his oaths dribbled to an intermittent trickle.
When he finally paused for breath Gard sat as though he had not heard, staring across the glade at the fire, but Jinny, at his side, seemed all attention, her long ears pricked forward, her sagacious little visage turned full upon the stranger. There was something disconcerting in the attitude of the two, and Broome felt it, without comprehending it. His voice trailed off weakly.
“Mebby ye don’t like my remarks,” he said, lamely, “I notice ye don’t cuss none yerself?”
“Don’t I?” Gard asked the question in all simplicity. “I didn’t know it.”
Broome stared, uneasily, until the other was constrained to take notice.
“I guess I do,” he laughed, half apologetically. “I guess I swear as much as anybody, when I feel so,” he added, “but I don’t feel so much—not nowadays.”
“Ye kin jus’ bet yer life,” blustered Broome, with a show of being at ease, “that if ye’d bin through what I have ye’d be ready to cuss the hull blamed outfit.”