"I got tired waiting out there, Jim," she pouted. "It's so lonesome."
Her voice was appealing, yet charged with a nervous independence. Cockney's reply was to stare down on her for a few moments, and turn his back without another word and follow Dakota to the loading cars.
Never had Stamford longed so intensely for the physique to squeeze an apology from a bully's throat, but the greater desire to hide from the hurt wife what he was thinking made him turn to her with a smile.
"These must be trying days to the shippers—ah—Mrs. Aikens, isn't it? I suppose you've had breakfast? I have, I believe, a bit of chewing gum in my pocket."
"I stopped in town for breakfast," she replied dully, her eyes on the big man climbing lazily to the roof of one of the cars before the gangways. "When I need more I'll go out to our mess-wagon. It'll be out there somewhere with the cattle."
"They've just commenced loading," Stamford went on eagerly. "This is my first experience. You see, I'm the sample tenderfoot in this district. I believe," he added, with a whimsical smile, "I've been that ever since I came."
Her eyes were on him now, and Stamford saw a gleaming smile, behind which lay an ever-gnawing worry.
"You seem to enjoy the distinction so well as to be jealous already of your successor," she said.
"It has its advantages, especially to an editor. It gives me access to the sources of news——"
"Thrusts them at you, in fact," she smiled.