“Well,” Rock said between mouthfuls, “when you stop to consider it, isn’t it? It seems that way, when you think of it.”
“Fiddlesticks!” She laughed. “That may be some women’s ambition, but not mine.”
“It isn’t an ambition,” Rock murmured. “It’s just human nature. You ask Alice. When you get to be a cattle queen, you’ll find yourself a heap more interested in men than you are in cows. You’re darned haughty about this poor worm man, right now. Your father was a man, old girl, and I expect your mother was glad of it.”
Nona stared at him, half astonished, half amused.
“I don’t know whether you’re preaching,” she said artlessly, “or drumming up trade for a matrimonial bureau.”
“Neither,” Rock said. “Just thinking out loud, that’s all.”
He rode up to the house and, dragging out his bed, lashed it across the black horse. Sangre stood shaking his glossy head, with the white star. Rock swung up. He hesitated a second. He wanted to say good-by, and still—— Then Nona came out of the kitchen with a package in her hand.
“Here’s a lunch,” she said. “You didn’t say where you were going, but if it’s an all-day ride a bite will come handy.”
“Thanks!” He tucked it in a saddle pocket. “Well, here’s hoping there’s no more excitement around here till I come back, Nona. And if I don’t come back, you’ll know it’s because I can’t, not because I don’t want to.”
“You’re not going on the warpath after Buck Walters, are you, Rock?” she asked uneasily. “Please don’t. It isn’t worth while. A man like that always gets what’s coming to him. Let him be.”