“Sure, come on!” Gordon seconded her plea. “We can fight and run like yesterday.”
“Yes, do?” Through the dusk her eyes, distended with fear for him, shone big and black in the dim whiteness of her face. In her dread earnestness she seized his arm; tried to pull him along. “Oh, won’t you come? I’m so afraid. First it was Sliver, then Jake, now you. I’m dreadfully afraid that something has happened to them—will happen to you. And if it did—oh, what should I do? What shall I do?”
Her pallid face, earnest pleading, shook Bull like a leaf. For almost a year now her slightest wish had been his law. If he had succeeded in holding up his end in Torreon, to use his own phrase, “had walked in an’ come out again, sober, like a man,” he might have given in; gone on in her service. But, besides the deadly hurt that had slain in him the desire for life, he knew himself; as Sliver had known himself; as Jake.
She was crying now, head bowed on his arm, and small wonder. Through events that had been enough to shatter nerves of iron she had borne herself like a man. Even now she sobbed quietly, doing her best to restrain her tears. “There! there!” Gathering her to him, Bull patted her back gently, as though she had been a grieving child. “There! there! In a few hours we’ll be over the border, and ’twon’t be long afore we’ll be back at Arboles, you an’ Gordon an’ me an’ Sliver an’ Jake.” He said more; drew a picture of them all in the full swing of the old life. Then, with an assumption of cheerfulness that was remarkable because of the pain it covered, he concluded: “So don’t bother about me. There’s less risk here than in any of the stan’s we made in the last three days. I’ve got ’em all down below me an’ there’s on’y this trail. If they try to come on, it ’ull be like shooting turkeys for a raffle. I’ll hold ’em jest for a whiles, then ketch up afore you reach the border. So run along.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure!” He had to swallow his heart to say it.
“Remember,” she called back, moving away, “I’ll be on pins and needles till you come.”
Strongly, with an accent she was afterward to remember, he made answer. “I won’t be here long.”
Till their dim figures vanished he watched them go. Then, empty rifle in hand, he turned his face to the foe.