“Harvey,”—the voice was almost a whisper—“we have seen some happy days—sometimes—and you have always been good to me; but, do you—— I mean, when you remember what we have lost, and what we are and must always remain, do you find in this life we are living, compensation enough for all that we suffer? Do you? Tell me!”
So! it had come to the other one, too.
A day of fast, hard riding had drawn to its close. Reddy and Dick, and their “pardners,” and Black Joaquin and his brother, together with two or three others had made their first day’s run of wild mustangs. Three or four “bunches” of native wild horses had been surrounded and driven with a rush, in a whirl of alkali dust, into a juniper corral far down in the cañon. Then the circling riatas had brought them—bucking and kicking—down to the earth; and biting and striking at their captors, they fought for their liberty till exhausted and dripping with sweat—their heads and knees skinned and mouths bleeding—they found themselves conquered, necked to gentler horses, or else hoppled.
At early morning Dick had come to Austin’s camp, bringing the newspaper; and the two had ridden away together. And now that each man had made his selection in the division of the day’s spoils, Austin turned his pony’s head toward the far-off tent—a little white speck in the light of the sunset on one of the distant foothills.
“Well, good-night, boys! I’ll join you again in the morning.” He loped away to the place where the “little one” was awaiting him.
The morrow’s sun shone blood-red—an enormous ruby disc, in the east through the smoky haze that hung over the valley still. By eight o’clock the air was stifling, and the men standing about camp ready for the second day’s run were impatient to be off. It was easier to endure the heat when in the saddle and in action, than to be idling here at the corral. They were wondering at Austin’s delay. And most of them had been swearing. Finally, Black Joaquin was told to go across to the white speck on the foothills, and “hustle him up;” for they were short of men to do the work, if he did not come. So the Mexican threw himself across the saddle, and digging his spurs into the flanks of the ugly-looking sorrel, loped over the hill to Austin’s camp.
Half an hour later he came back at racing speed to tell a story which made the men look at each other with startled glances, and even with suspicion at himself (so surely are evil deeds laid at the door of one with an evil reputation); but when they rode over to where the stilled forms lay beside the rifle whose aim had been true, they saw it had not been Black Joaquin.
Who, then? Too plainly, they saw. But why?