“Piffle!” from the big chair. “You couldn’t get on a bronk that was dangerous, and Gila monsters live farther south, and the Injuns are too lazy to carry anybody off. Besides, I wouldn’t let you go.”
“Then I’m still a ruined woman, except that I’m ruined quicker. My cows will die and my calves will be rustled and my horses ridden off—my cows and my calves and my horses!”
“Sell!” shouted Gary, forgetting other Bungalow Courters in his sudden fury. “You’re stung, I tell you. Sell the damned thing!”
Patricia looked at him. She had a pretty little round chin, but there were times when it squared itself surprisingly. And whenever it did square itself, you could souse Patricia and hold her head under water until air bubbles ceased to rise; and if you brought her up and got her gasping again, Patricia would gasp, “Scissors!” like the old woman in the story.
“No. I shall not sell. I shall not do anything more than I have done already. If you refuse to go to Nevada and take charge of Johnnywater, I shall go myself or I shall let my cattle starve.”
She would, too. Gary knew that. He looked steadily at her until he was sure of the square chin and all, and then he threw out both hands as if in complete surrender.
“Oh, very well,” he said tolerantly. “We won’t quarrel about it, Pat.”
CHAPTER THREE
PATRICIA TAKES HER STAND
A young man of intelligence may absorb a great many psychological truths while helping to build in pictures mock dramas more or less similar to real, human problems. Gary wore a brain under his mop of brown hair, and he had that quality of stubbornness which will adopt strategy—guile, even—for the sake of winning a fight. To-night, he chose to assume the air of defeat that he might win ultimate victory.
Gary had not the slightest intention of ruining his own future as well as Patricia’s by yielding with an easy, “Oh, very well” surrender, and going away into the wilds of Nevada to attempt the raising of cattle in a district so worthless that it had never so much as seen a surveyor’s transit. Desert it must be; a howling waste of sand and lizards and snakes. The very fact that Patricia had been able, with a few thousands of dollars, to buy out a completely equipped cattle ranch, damned the venture at once as the mad freak of a romantic girl’s ignorance. He set himself now to the task of patiently convincing Patricia of her madness.