Before Jess, the pretty girl, arrived, the cowboys were friends and the tenor of their calm relations was rippleless as a mirror. Jess was not there a day, before each drew himself insensibly from the others, while a vague hostility shone dimly in his eyes. It was the instinct of the fighting male animal aroused by the presence of Jess, the pretty girl. Jess, however, proceeded on her dainty way, sweetly ignorant of the sentiments she awakened.
Men are mere animals. Women are, too, for that matter. But the latter are different animals from men. The effort the race makes to be other, better or different than the mere animal fails under pressure. It always failed; it will always fail. Civilisation is the veriest veneer and famously thin. A year on the plains cracks this veneer—this shell—and the animal issues visibly forth. This shell-cracking comes by the expanding growth of all that is animalish in man—attributes of the physical being, fed and pampered by a plains' existence.
To recur to the boys of the Cross-K. The dark, vague, impalpable differences which cut off each of these creatures from his fellows, and inspired him with an unreasoning hate, had flourished with the brief week of their existence. A philosopher would have looked for near trouble on the Cross-K.
“Whatever did you take my saddle for, Bill?” said Jack Cook to one Bill Watkins.
“Which I allows I'll ride it some,” replied Watkins; “thought it might like to pack a sure-'nough long-horn jest once for luck!”
“Well, don't maverick it no more,” retorted Cook, moodily, and ignoring the gay insolence of the other. “Leastwise, don't come a-takin' of it, an' sayin' nothin'. You can palaver Americano, can't you? When you aims to ride my saddle ag'in, ask for it; if you can't talk, make signs, an' if you can't make signs, shake a bush; but don't go romancin' off in silence with no saddle of mine no more.”
“Whatever do you reckon is liable to happen if I pulls it ag'in to-morry?” inquired Bill in high scorn.
Watkins was of a more vivacious temper than the gloomy Cook.
“Which if you takes it ag'in, I'll shorely come among you a whole lot. An' some prompt!” replied Cook, in a tone of obstinate injury.
These boys were brothers before Jess, the pretty girl, appeared. Either would have gone afoot all day for the other. Going afoot, too, is the last thing a cowboy will consent to.