CHAPTER XVIII
A week later Derrick was tramping along a dusty road which led to the little town of San Leonardo, where, he had been told, he could find a night's lodging. He was tired and footsore; in addition to the English five-pound note, he possessed but very little of the money with which he had left the circus; though, during his tramp, he had been able to get an occasional job, helping some herdsman rounding up his cattle or assisting timbermen to adjust their loads, and he was hoping that he would find some permanent employment in one of the big towns. He had the road to himself, and was feeling rather down on his luck, as a friendless man in a strange land must do; and, worse than all, he was, at that moment, terribly home-sick. Not for the first time, he had realized how much he had given up when he decided to sacrifice himself for Miriam Ainsley—no, Miriam Heyton, as she was now—the Miriam who, strangely enough, troubled his thoughts but little. Indeed, when he did think of her, with the remembrance was mixed a kind of amazement that he had ever loved her; for the illusion had now left him, and he knew that she had not been worth, at any time, all that she had cost him.
"What a fool I have been!" was the thought, the bitterness of which so many men have felt. But for Miriam, and the villainy of the man who had stolen her from him, he might have been still in England, might—who knows?—in better circumstances, have met the girl at Brown's Buildings. He would have been free to love her and to tell her so.
With a shake of the head, and a setting of the lips, he tramped on, every step giving him pain; and at last he neared the town.
It was a small place, with a few scattered 'dobe houses, one of which bore the sign indicating an inn. Outside the door, with their cigarettes between their lips, their whips lying beside them, sat and lounged a group of cowboys. Derrick had made the acquaintance of many of their kind since the night on which he had checkmated the specimens in the circus, and he had got on very well with them; for your cowboy is an acute person, and knows a "man" when he sees him. As Derrick limped up they stopped talking, and eyed him with narrowed lids.
Derrick saluted them in Spanish fashion, for he had picked up a few phrases, and one of the men made way for him on the rude bench, greeted him with a nod, and slid a mug and a bottle of wine towards him. Derrick drank—it was like nectar in his parched mouth—and the cowboy, with a grunt of approval, tendered him a cigarette and inquired curtly, but not unkindly, where he was going. Derrick replied, in broken Spanish, that he was looking for work.
The cowboy said, "Inglés," and nodded to one of his companions, who, with a sudden flush, said—
"Thought you were a fellow-countryman. On the tramp, mate, eh? Well, I've done that myself, and, between you and me, there's many a better job." He filled up Derrick's mug and eyed him with friendly questioning. "What's your line?"
"Oh, anything," said Derrick, with a smile. "Tramps can't be choosers. You have a ranch here, I suppose?"
The other Englishman nodded.