"Why, sure! You don't think Butch cuts any figure with me, do you?" (Plenty of time—and he could get there before dark, if he hurried.)
"No—'course he don't!" cried a mocking voice somewhere among the rocks.
Bud started, closed his fingers upon the brooch and turned toward the voice. The softness had left his eyes, which snapped with their old fire.
"You know it, Butch! You heard what I said." Strange how the flinging of that cameo pin at his feet brought Bonnie so vividly before him that even his quarrel with Butch seemed irrelevant, a matter of secondary importance.
Now he knew that the illuminating truth had come upon him at the pool when he picked up his hat and saw that the brooch was gone. It was like losing Bonnie herself—and of course he had always known, deep in his heart, that he meant never to lose Bonnie Prosser out of his life; that some day—but the time of easy assurance was past, and it had taken the rough hand of Butch Cassidy to tear away the film from his eyes, just as he had torn the pin from Bud's hat.
"See you later, Butch!" he called defiantly, and started on a run for his horse.
"Yeah—yo're damn' right!" Butch's mocking laughter followed him, echoed and was flung back again and again from the farther wall of the canyon.