“All the distance between here and heaven! All the difference between poverty and self-respect! Oh!”—she looked him fair in the face—“it’s no use to pretend! Do you know what I did this very morning, sir, just before you rode in? Do you know why I’m crying now? I can’t help it. Why, I was down there to tell my men that I’d turned them all loose this morning. I discharged them all. I told them I was broke, that I couldn’t pay my hands.
“Poor? Don’t I know! Go back to Gonzales and tell your people that the last Lockhart’s down in the dust. I’ve got no pride left at all, because I’m broke. Do you wonder that I cry?”
“She did!” said Jim Nabours. “She is!”
McMasters turned away and looked out the window. The tears of such a woman made one thing no man could face.
“But, of course,” added the foreman, “I taken all that in my own hands. I just sont the hands out like usual. Seems like I can hear the irons sizzling on about a dozen long ears by now already.”
“And the lot not worth a pinch of old Milly’s snuff!” commented Taisie. “The market—that’s the one thing! Mr. McMasters has brought news!”
“I almost hesitate over it,” said the young man. “I can’t bring it free of risk and danger.”
“You don’t know my men!” broke out Taisie proudly.
“Oh, yes, I do! I know us all, ma’am. They—we would all die first. But suppose that was not enough?”
“And if I’m a woman, at least I’m not an old woman. I’ll drive the first Texas herd to the railroad with my own men if it takes our last horse and last man! It’s north for me, or I’m gone. When you rode in, sir, I was at the lowest ebb of all my life.”