The swinging door opened, and Polly came in from the kitchen. “Harv!” she faltered. “Jeff!” Then, she fell silent, watching them with troubled eyes.
Blandy’s face broke into a reassuring grin. “Say! we’re excited over nothin’,” he declared. “Don’t you worry, Polly. Patton, I hired the only two burros in town this mornin’, and bought some grub and feed.”
There were no further words between the two men, only a coldness that was barely noticeable. After the midday meal, Patton even helped with the packing. Polly, entering their bedroom hastily, found him standing on a bench looking at the labels of some bottles on the medicine-shelf.
“Be careful what you take,” she cautioned. “That bottle of mercury tablets is up there, and it’s the same size as the one that’s got stuff in it for rattlesnake bites.”
“It’s the rattlesnake medicine that I’m hunting,” answered Patton tartly.
Polly went back into the kitchen, where Blandy was busy packing the raisins, crackers and canned beef. She looked frightened. “Oh, I’m so sorry you and Harvey quarrelled,” she half-whispered. “Please, please don’t have any more trouble with him.”
From the standpoint of beauty there was little to recommend Jeff Blandy save his eyes. Now, as he smiled down at her, his eyes made up for all the deficiencies of his rugged face. “We was hungry,” he declared. “That was all.”
“Jeff,” she said, “I never knew how good you were. Oh, if girls only realised that the men that keep dressed up aren’t always the best men.”
“And on the other hand,” he observed, “I’ve saw some pretty bad men in bum clothes.”
Late that night, the burros were packed, one with provisions and feed, and enough heavy sacking for a small sun shelter; the other with the large, flat-sided water canteens. When the start was made, Polly told the two men a whispered good-bye from the front porch. And as the burros were headed northward, Blandy leading one and Patton the other, she watched the little pack-train leave the town. The light of the stars, reflected on the grey of the sage and the yellow-grey of the desert floor, made the departure plain for a long distance, though only as so many moving black specks. She waited until the specks dropped from sight into a far-off swale.