“No; and I don’t know that I can make you understand. Let me say, I realized that my path and hers could never run together.
“But you’re in the Indian Nations now. There are three hundred Comanches in here somewhere north of you that have come in from the Plains to visit with the Kiowas. That’s Yellow Hand’s band. If you meet those Comanches after what they surely will hear—why, I suppose, you might maybe be willing to have a good killer along with you.
“I supposed maybe you’d be thankful to get this word in time. So, to that extent, you see, my path does once more run for a little way not far from hers. Maybe she’ll talk to me. I’m going to see. You can’t any of you stop me. You’ve all been ignorant fools. You deserve nothing.”
“I used to read my Bible, in Sunday school,” said Nabours after a long silence. “I done read about that there, now, Rachel—was it?—same name, she had, as Cohen’s wife down to Gonzales, of the Golden Eagle Store. Now Jacob, he was a good cow hand, and he worked seven years night wrangling for said Rachel—maybe her name was Rebecca, I don’t know. Well, anyhow, I reckon, maybe it was all right about Jacob and the ranch boss. The trouble with me is, I got too damned many Jacobs along already in this here outfit. I wasn’t studying to take on no more.
“Still, when the men hear about old Yellow Hand it’s more’n likely they’ll be glad to pick up a hand that can throw lead if he has to. Come on in. I won’t let nobody start nothing. We can dig into this further along.”
McMasters paid no attention to the other men about the camp that evening, who, even after the foreman’s explanation, remained sullen and aloof. Without asking consent, he walked to the cook-cart plunder, unearthed his own bed roll and war bag and chose a place for himself outside the circle appropriated by the other hands. He made such toilet as he could, helped himself at the cook’s kettle and pans—breaking a two days’ fast—all without converse with the men who once had adjudged him unfit for their association. And in the twilight he walked without any by-your-leave directly to the camp of Taisie Lockhart and her servants. They watched him go. She saw him coming in the dusk; she felt her heart leap strangely. How could she keep her face calm, her eyes severe?
“It is Mr. McMasters?” she spoke coldly, did not put out her hand. He had remained silent, his own face sad enough. “Why do you come—how dare you come?”
She had not asked him to be seated; was treating him as though he were one of the hands; as though he were her enemy, not her hereditary friend or ally, not a man who had saved her life but now. It was hard even for his courage to endure. Something at last gave way. When he spoke a resonance was in his voice which she had never known before.
“Dare? Why did I dare come? I dared not stay away!”