“I’m sorry,” said Creede briefly. “And I needed the job, too,” he added lugubriously. “How about your foreman?” he inquired, as if snatching at a straw. “Same thing, eh? Well, I’ll go you––next month.”
He laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and crowded his big black sombrero down over his eyes until it gave him a comical air of despair.
“Luck’s gone,” he remarked, reaching parenthetically for a cigarette paper. “See you later.” And, with a last roguish twinkle at Miss Lucy, he slouched off toward the fire.
His luck indeed had gone, but somewhere in that giant carcass which harbored the vindictive hate of an Apache, and the restless energy of a Texano, there still lingered the exuberant joyousness of a boy, 306 the indomitable spirit of the pioneer, resigned to any fate so long as there is a laugh in it. As he drifted into the crowd Lucy’s heart went out to him; he was so big and strong and manly in this, the final eclipse of his waning fortunes.
“Mr. Creede is a noble kind of a man, isn’t he?” she said, turning to where Hardy was still standing. “Won’t you sit down, Rufus, and let’s talk this over for a minute. But before you decide anything, I want you to get a good night’s sleep. You are a free man now, you know, and if there’s any worrying to be done it’s my funeral––isn’t it?”
If he heard her at all Hardy made no response to the jest. He stood before her, swaying dizzily as he groped about for his hat, which had fallen from his hand. Then at last a faint smile broke through the drawn lines in his face.
“That’s right,” he said, sinking down at her side, and as he settled back against the tree his eyes closed instantly, like a child whose bedtime has come. “I’m––I’m so dead tired I can’t talk straight, Lucy––to say nothing of think. But––I’ll take care of you. We aren’t sheeped out yet. Only––only I can’t––I forget what I’m going to say.” His head fell forward as he spoke, his hands hung heavy, and he slipped slowly to the ground, fast asleep.
After two days and nights of turmoil and passion his troubles were ended, suddenly; and as she raised him up Lucy Ware bent down quickly under cover of the dusk and kissed his rumpled hair.