“The trouble with you is,” broke out Dalhart moodily, “you don’t know how a man can love you—you don’t know how I love you!”
He reached out a hand to touch the bridle of her saddle horse, which flung its head impatiently.
“I think I do,” said Taisie slowly. “You love me like a man. They’re all alike.”
“I believe you do love that damned Gonzales renegade. He’s gone again, and he may come back, or he may not. What you need is a man to take care of you; some one better than that cold-blooded killer that ain’t got a heart for either man or woman!”
“Stop! I tell you I want to hear no more of this!” The girl’s voice had in it a quiet fury. “At least I never have heard that man say a word against you or any one else. If he’s a killer he’d face his man, I’m sure of that, and not curse him behind his back.”
“He’d better not say anything about me,” Dalhart blustered.
But Taisie Lockhart’s contemptuous laugh at that was the cruelest thing he had ever heard in all his life. She spurred on and left him.
Dribbles of the herd continued to come in. The draggled encampment was slow to take on even a little order. The men had begun to lose confidence, to dread their luck. And now was time for a repetition of the scene on the south bank of the Red—another rider must find burial in his blankets. Never had the spirits of the men been so low, the hope of success so faint, the savage irritability of all so unmistakable.
It took a day and a half to finish the unhappy duties of the last camp below the Canadian and drive forward the remade herd. It was necessary to follow down the boggy stream to find a sound crossing. Beyond, within a mile or so, lay the main Canadian. Here at least they met no trouble. The spongelike sands had swallowed up the torrents until only an occasional thread of lazily trickling water marked the wide expanse from bank to bank. The cattle, warm and thirsty, seemed disposed to break ranks and explore these little trickles of water, so that the men had enough to do. Dalhart rode moodily, indifferently, on his point.