McAlpin half closed his eyes. “He’ll be so lame it would stagger a cowboy to back him ten feet––and never be hurt a mite, neither. Trust me!”
“No other horse that she could ride, in the barn?”
“No horse she could ride between Calabasas and Thief River.”
“If she insists on riding something, or even walking home,” continued de Spain dubiously, for he felt instinctively that he should have the task of his life to induce Nan to accept any kind of a peace-offering, “I’ll ride or walk with her anyway. Can you sleep me here to-night, on the hay?”
“Sleep you on a hair mattress, sir. You’ve got a room right here up-stairs, didn’t you know that?”
“Don’t mind the bed,” directed de Spain prudently. “I like the hay better.”
“As you like; we’ve got plenty of it fresh up-stairs, from the Gap. But the bed’s all right, sir; it is, on me word.”
With arrangements so begun, de Spain walked out-of-doors and looked reflectively up the Sleepy Cat road. One further refinement in his appeal for Nan’s favor suggested itself. She would be hungry, possibly faint in the heat and dust, when 121 she arrived. He returned to McAlpin: “Where can I get a good cup of coffee when the stage comes in?”
“Go right down to the inn, sir. It’s a new chap running it––a half-witted man from Texas. My wife is cooking there off and on. She’ll fix you up a sandwich and a cup of good coffee.”
It was four o’clock, and the sun beat fiercely on the desert. De Spain walked down to the inn unmindful of the heat. In summer rig, with his soft-shirt collar turned under, his forearms bare, and his thoughts engaged, he made his way rapidly on, looking neither to the right nor the left.