"Then I reckon you been foolin' me right along."
"That is not so!" Boca's hand dropped to her side and she turned from him.
"'Course it ain't! And say, Boca, I'll make it through all right. All I want is a good hoss—and a canteen and some grub."
"I have made ready the food and have a canteen for you—in my room."
"Then let's go hunt up that cayuse."
"It is that you will die—" she began; but Pete, irritated by argument and the burning wind that droned through the cañon, put an end to it all by dropping the saddle and taking her swiftly in his arms. He kissed her—rather perfunctorily. "My little pardner!" he whispered.
Boca, although sixteen and mature in a sense, was in reality little more than a child. When Pete chose to assert himself, he had much the stronger will. She felt that all pleading would be useless. "You have the reata?" she queried, and turning led him past the corral and along the fence until they came to the stream. A few hundred yards down the stream she turned, and cautioning him to follow closely, entered a sort of lateral cañon—a veritable box at whose farther end was Flores's cache of horses, kept in this hidden pasture for any immediate need. Pete heard the quick trampling of hoofs and the snort of startled horses.
"We will drive them on into the corral," said Boca.
Pete could see but dimly, but he sensed the situation at once. The cañon was a box, narrowing to a natural enclosure with the open end fenced. He had seen such places—called "traps" by men who made a business of catching wild horses.
Several dim shapes bunched in the small enclosure, plunging and circling as Pete found and closed the bars.