The girl noticed that his horse, saddled with Endicott's saddle stood close behind her.
"I didn't mean that!" she exclaimed. "But you are cold—chilled to the bone. You need the fire more than I do."
The man shook his head: "I'll be goin' now," he said. "You'd better make you some coffee."
"You're going to—to——"
Tex nodded: "Yes. To find the pilgrim. If he's alive I'll find him. An' if he ain't I'll find him. An' when I do, I'll bring him back to you." He turned abruptly, swung onto his horse, and Alice watched him as he disappeared down the valley, keeping to the higher ground. Not until she was alone did the girl realize how miserably cold and uncomfortable she was. She rose stiffly, and walking slowly to the edge of the bank, looked out over the little valley. The great reservoir had run out in that first wild rush of water and now the last rays of moonlight showed only wide, glistening pools, and the creek subsided to nearly its normal proportions. With a shudder she turned toward the fire. Its warmth felt grateful. She removed the slicker and riding costume and, wrapping herself, squaw-like, in a blanket, sat down in the little shelter tent. She found that the Texan had filled the coffee pot and, throwing in some coffee, she set it to boil.
"He's so thoughtful, and self-reliant, and—and competent," she murmured. "And he's brave, and—and picturesque. Winthrop is brave, too—just as brave as he is, but—he isn't a bit picturesque." She relapsed into silence as she rummaged in the bag for a cup, and the sugar, and a can of milk. The moon sank behind the ridge and the girl replenished her fire from the pile of wood the Texan had left within reach of her hand. She drank her coffee and her eyes sought to penetrate the blackness beyond the firelight. Somewhere out there in the dark—she shuddered as she attempted to visualize what was somewhere out there in the dark. And then a flash of memory brought with it a ray of hope that cheered her immeasurably. "Why, he was a champion swimmer in college," she said aloud. "He was always winning cups and things. And he's strong, and brave—and yet——" Vividly to her mind came the picture of the wildly rushing flood with its burden of tossing trees, and the man being swept straight into the gurge of it. "I'll tell him he's brave—and he'll spoil it all by saying that it was the only practical thing to do." "Oh," she cried aloud, "I could love him if it were not for his deadly practicability—even if I should have to live in Cincinnati." And straightway fell to comparing the two men. "Tex is absurdly unconventional in speech and actions, and he has an adorable disregard for laws and things. He's just a big, irresponsible boy—and yet, he makes you feel as if he always knew exactly what to do and how to do it. And he is brave, too, with a reckless, devil-may-care sort of bravery that takes no thought of cost or consequences. He knew, when he let go his bridle reins, that he couldn't swim a stroke—and he smiled and didn't care. And he's gentle and considerate, too." She remembered the look in his eyes when he said: "You are cold," and blushed furiously.
It seemed hours she sat there staring into the little fire and listening for sounds from the dark. But the only sounds that came to her were the sounds of the feeding horses, and in utter weariness she lay back with her head upon a folded blanket, and slept.
When the Texan swung onto his horse after having made the girl comfortable for her long vigil, a scant half-hour of moonlight was left to him. He gave the horse his head and the animal picked his way among the loose rocks and scrub timber that capped the ridge. When darkness overtook him he dismounted, unsaddled, and groped about for firewood. Despite its recent soaking the resinous bull pine flared up at the touch of a match, and with his back to a rock-wall, the cowboy sat and watched the little flames shoot upward. Once more he felt for his "makings" and with infinite pains dried out his papers and tobacco.
"It's the chance I be'n aimin' to make for myself," he mused, as he drew the grey smoke of a cigarette deep into his lungs, "to get Bat an' the pilgrim away—an' I ride off and leave it." The cigarette was consumed and he rolled another. "Takin' a slant at himself from the inside, a man kind of gets a line on how damned ornery folks can get. Purdy got shot, an' everyone said he got just what was comin' to him—— Me, an' everyone else—an' he did. But when you get down to cases, he wasn't no hell of a lot worse'n me, at that. We was both after the same thing—only his work was coarser." For hours the man sat staring into his fire, the while he rolled and smoked many cigarettes.
"Oh, hell!" he exclaimed, aloud. "I can't turn nester, an' even if I did, she couldn't live out in no mud-roof shack in the bottom of some coulee! Still, she—— There I go again, over the same old trail. This here little girl has sure gone to my head—like a couple of jolts of hundred-proof on an empty stummick. Anyhow, she's a damn sight safer'n ever she was before, an'—I'll bet the old man would let me take that Eagle Creek ranch off his hands, an' stake me to a little bunch of stock besides, if I went at him right. If it wasn't for that damn pilgrim! Bat was right. He holds the edge on me—but he's a man." The cowboy glanced anxiously toward the east where the sky was beginning to lighten with the first hint of dawn. He rose, trampled out his fire, and threw the saddle onto his horse. "I've got to find him," he muttered, "if Bat ain't found him already. I don't know much about this swimmin' business but if he could have got holt of a tree or somethin' he might have made her through."