Sliver scratched his head. “You-all mightn’t believe it, but you c’d have fired a charge of buckshot between ’em at long range without hittin’ either.”
Jake nodded. “I’d have allowed as much. But these ain’t that kind. Did you see how she deviled him all through breakfast? Well, she’ll keep him on aidge that-a-way all his life. He’ll never get all at once; never quite reach the end. They’ll allus be something beyond.”
“Say!” Sliver looked at him in dumb wonder. “Fer an old bachelor you know a heap. Where’d you learn it?”
“Where any man learns it—from a woman.” A shadow swept, for a moment, the reckless face. “On’y—I didn’t have sense enough to stay be my teacher.”
Just then Gordon overtook them, but while helping them to saddle up—for it was his day on guard—Sliver curiously watched Jake. When, moreover, he mounted to the watch-tower above the gates and saw Lee and Gordon ride away, the sight accentuated a new feeling, one of a vacancy in his being which, so far, a long succession of fluffy, blondined ladies had somehow failed to fill.
Their strongly perfumed memory set his head wagging over that problem in morals which has puzzled wiser heads. “Ain’t Natur’ the fickle jade, a-setting a man to fall dead in love with one girl while he’s still terrible fond of two dozen? Why kedn’t she a’ b’en more single-minded?”
His brooding over these inconsistencies was suddenly disrupted by a flash of doubt, so pronounced as to be almost alarm. Lee and Gordon were now silhouetted against the sky-line. They were, however, no longer at correct riding distance. Eyes less keen than Sliver’s could easily have perceived they were holding hands. He drew the phenomenon to the attention of Jake, who just then came riding from under the arch.
“Say,” he called down, “d’you allow it’s all right for them two to go off that-a-way by themselves?”
Jake snorted. “Didn’t she ride with you yesterday an’ me the day afore?”
“Yes, but she’s our boss an’—well, they love each other a whole lot.”