"Want to say good-by?" inquired Brig, glancing up at her from under his hat, but Bowles did not reply. A deadly apathy had succeeded his passion, and he was sullen and incapable of higher thoughts. All he wanted now was to get away—after that he could think what to do.
They turned their horses' heads toward Chula Vista, where they must go to draw their time, and after they had ridden a mile Bowles suddenly turned in his saddle—but Dixie had passed inside. A deep and melancholy sadness came over him now, and he sighed as he slumped down in his seat, but Brigham did not notice his silence. At noon they ate as they rode, getting a drink at a nester's windmill, and at night they camped by a well. Then it was that Bowles woke up from his brooding and saw that he was not alone in his mood—Brigham, too, was downcast and wrapt up in his thoughts. His mind ran quickly back to ascertain the cause, and he remembered the cherished job.
For one short, eventful month Brigham Clark had been a boss. A straw-boss, to be sure, but still a boss—and now he had lost his job. Never again, perhaps, would he rise to the proud eminence of a "straw"—and yet he had quit his place instantly to throw in his lot with him. A wave of compassion and self-reproach swept over Bowles at the thought, and he forgot his own ugly mood.
"Brig," he said, as they sat close to their tiny fire, "I'm sorry you had to quit. If it hadn't been for me, and Hardy Atkins, you'd be back there now, on your job. It might have led to something better, too. Mr. Lee often said——"
"Aw, fergit it," grumbled Brig morosely. "I didn't want the job. What's the use of bein' a puncher, anyway? They's nothin' in it but hard work. I've got a good mind to hike back to the Gila and go to pitchin' hay."
"Well, if I'm in your way at all," urged Bowles, "don't hesitate to say so. I only proposed this White Mountain trip——"
"Oh, that's all right," broke in Brig. "I'll be glad to git away from it all—git where they ain't no girls, nor mail, nor nothin'. Up there in them big pine trees where a man can fergit his troubles. But I want to go back past the Bat Wing. I told Dix all about it last week, and I shore want to bid her good-by. There's a good girl—Dix—but she can't understand. She says if I had any nerve I'd go and take a chance—marry the girl and wait and see what happened to me—my girl down on the river, you know."
Bowles nodded gravely and waited for him to go on. It was a month since Brigham had spoken of his girl, and he had never discussed the affair since that first rush of confidences, until now suddenly he dived into the midst of it.
"No," continued Brig, gazing mournfully at his dead cigarette; "Dix is all right, but she don't know them Mormons like I do. She don't know what they're liable to do. This feller that's tryin' to marry my girl is the bishop's own son—he's that feller I beat up so bad when I took to the hills a while back—and he's bound to do me dirt. My girl won't marry me, nohow—not lessen I become a Mormon—and shore as you're settin' there, boy, if I take that gal from the bishop's son, I'm elected to go on a mission!
"I know it! Hain't the old man got it in fer me? And then what's to become of my wife? Am I goin' to leave her fer two years and that dastard a-hangin' around? Not on yore life—if they summoned me fer a mission, I'd either take my wife along or I'd kill that bishop's son—one or the other. But that's the worst of it—the bishop's kid is on the spot, and I'm hidin' out like a coyote. My girl keeps a-writin' like she never gets no letters, and beggin' me to come back and be good! But I can't do it—that's all—I been a renegade too long."