He paused and fumbled with his papers.
“Here’s a good pen,” he said, “and––and here’s the paper.” He shoved out the fair sheet upon which he had intended to write and rose up dumbly from the table.
“I’m going to bed,” he said, and slipped quietly out of the room. As he lay in his blankets he could see the gleam of light from the barred window and hear Jeff scraping his boots uneasily on the floor. True indeed, his hands were like burnt rawhide from gripping at ropes and irons, his clothes were greasy and his boots smelled of the corral, and yet––she had given him a kiss! He tried to picture it in his 367 mind: Kitty smiling––or startled, perhaps––Jeff masterful, triumphant, laughing. Ah God, it was the same kiss she had offered him, and he had run away!
In the morning, there was a division between them, a barrier which could not be overcome. Creede lingered by the door a minute, awkwardly, and then rode away. Hardy scraped up the greasy dishes and washed them moodily. Then the great silence settled down upon Hidden Water and he sat alone in the shadow of the ramada, gazing away at the barren hills.
CHAPTER XIX
THE BIG DRUNK
The sun rose clear for the hundredth time over the shoulder of the Four Peaks; it mounted higher, glowing with a great light, and the smooth round tops of the bowlders shone like half-buried skulls along the creek-bed; it swung gloriously up to its zenith and the earth palpitated with a panting heat. Summer had come, and the long days when the lizards crawl deep into their crevices and the cattle follow the scanty shade of the box cañons or gather in standing-places where the wind draws over the ridges and mitigates the flies. In the pasture at Hidden Water the horses stood head and tail together, side by side, each thrashing the flies from the other’s face and dozing until hunger or thirst aroused them or perversity took them away. Against the cool face of the cliff the buzzards moped and stretched their dirty wings in squalid discomfort; the trim little sparrow-hawks gave over their hunting; and all the world lay tense and still. Only at the ranch house where Hardy kept a perfunctory watch was there any sign of motion or life.
For two weeks now he had been alone, ever since 369 Jeff went down to Bender, and with the solitary’s dread of surprise he stepped out into the ramada regularly, scanning the western trail with eyes grown weary of the earth’s emptiness.