"Damn you," he raved, shaking his clenched fist at the offending white billow; "I'd got him if you had waited a second longer or crossed a second sooner. Everything goes against me, and he's got all the luck. I'll get him yet." And with hideous blasphemies trickling from his thick lips, he again shook his fist impotently at the derisively smiling face of the moon and slunk away to the horse tied in the shadows behind him.
In blissful ignorance of that narrowly averted calamity, the pair on the other side of the ridge rode silently along in the restored moonlight. The woman was very happy and loth to break the spell; the man whirling in the maelstrom of a jumbled introspection. The victim of strongly opposed currents, he drifted aimlessly in the sea of troubled thought, seeing no shore and seeking none. Content to leave much to Chance and more to Opportunity, he had hitherto let his destiny shape itself, satisfied with merely aiding fate to the best of his physical ability as the occasion offered; but now he was conscious of a growing incitement to dictate his own future. The temptation to try and dominate things was very strong. He had compelled the smaller ones to come his way when he had so chosen, why not the greater ones. He glanced covertly at the woman riding by his side; in the soft moonlight she was very fair.
It was she who first broke the silence, her words unconsciously pandering to his suddenly-formed resolution.
"How splendidly you ride, Mr. Douglass!" Her admiration was frank and sincere. "You have that horse under perfect control, and yet, if I am not mistaken, he is the worst of the three 'outlaws' which all the other boys have declared unridable. Abbie told me this morning that everybody is afraid of them."
"Abbie tells you a great many funny things, I reckon," he said, with an evasive grin, and she laughed reminiscently. "Well, old Highball here isn't just what you might call love-inspiring, and the boys have kind o' passed him up; they have too many other good gentle horses in their strings to justify my letting them take any chances. But as to their being 'afraid' of him, why that's all bosh. Cowpunchers who are afraid of any horse don't hold their jobs long, Miss Carter."
"Yet you, yourself, take the very chances that you shield your men from." The tone was severe and distinctly reproachful, albeit her heart beat with an understanding pride. He shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.
"Well, the brutes have got to earn their keep, and hay is high this year."
"Yes, about two inches, on that part of the public domain where this particular brute ranges," she said scornfully. "He has not been in the corrals for over two years, as I happen to know. I believe you overheard what Abbie said, and are riding him out of sheer perversity. You don't like to be thought afraid, do you?"
"No, ma'am," he said, so humbly that she laughed despite her resolve. Then, with a sudden burst of confidence, "You see, he threw me last week and kind o' upset my conceit, and it's been on my conscience ever since. We just had to come to some definite conclusion as to who is bossing this job. He's going to be a good horse now."
"Now, as to hating being thought afraid," he went on after a short silence, "I guess every man thinks that way. And yet there is something that every man fears, that he is more or less afraid of, if he is only honest enough to admit it."