"Good rider, too," he observed; "beat most of the boys. I knowed her four miles away by section lines."
Once more he paused, and Bowles preserved his Sphinx-like silence. He was learning the customs of the country fast.
"Don't have any like her back where you come from, I reckon," suggested Brigham, his eyes shining with local pride; and Bowles sadly shook his head. No, they did not—there was no one like Dixie Lee.
CHAPTER X
THE FIRST SMILE
The next three days were one long, aching agony for Bowles. He carried a little water for Gloomy Gus, but stubbornly refused the job of flunky. He helped the horse wrangler—a wild-eyed youth who could pop a rope like a pistol-shot and yell like a murdering Apache—but as resolutely refused the job of assistant. He had been taken on as a cowboy, and a cowboy he tried to be, though every nerve and muscle called a halt. From the first morning, when they sent him out in the dark to wrangle the horse pasture, to the third evening, when he crawled wearily into an old "bed" that he had picked up, his life was a prolonged succession of accidents, mistakes, and awkward happenings; yet he stayed with it, bull-headed and determined, until Henry Lee grew tired of hazing him and put him on the day-herd to get healed up.
There was very little left of the lily-white Mr. Bowles when the ordeal came to an end. His hands that had been so trim and slender were swelled up too big for his gloves. The outside was raw with sunburn and wind-chap and the inside was blistered and rope-worn. His lips had cracked wide open from the dry north wind, and his face was beginning to peel like a snake. Also his arms had been nearly jerked from the sockets by a horse he had tried to hold, and a calf had kicked him in the leg while he was trying to bulldog it at the branding. Like the cowboy in the ballad, "he was busted from his somber to his heel," but he had managed to come through alive. And now, as a reward for his prowess and daring, he was set to mind the day-herd.
Grass was short in the Bat Wing pastures, and every day brought in new herds of dogies to be held for the April shipping; so, just to keep all hands busy and save a little feed, Henry Lee turned his gentle cattle out on to the prairie to rustle what provender they could. Now riding day-herd is not supposed to be a very high-grade or desirable occupation, and good punchers have been known to quit a boss who put them at it; but Bowles was led to believe that it was a post of honor. Awful stories of cowboys who had gone to sleep on guard were told by the fire at night, and the danger from sudden stampedes was played up to the skies. The monotony of the job was admitted, but the responsibility was great. So Bowles accepted the position gladly, and the round-up went on unimpeded.
Lolling in the shade of his horse or sitting with his back to the dry wind, Bowles watched them "pluck the blossoms" while he doctored his numerous wounds, meanwhile falling into lovelorn reveries on the subject of Dixie Lee. It was humiliating, in a way, to be reduced to the ranks; to be compelled to wait on her pleasure, and court her from afar; but something told him that Dixie thought of him even though she passed him by; and just to be one of her lovers, to be allowed to worship with the rest—that was enough to bear him up and give him courage to wait. And either in the end she would speak to him and take him back into her life, or he would depart in silence to hide from her laughing eyes. The game of love was new to Bowles and he knew little of its stealth and wiles; just to be near her was all he knew, and the future must solve the rest. So, like a questing knight, nursing his hurts after his first combat, he sat out on the boundless prairie and communed with his own sad heart.