The girl’s averted face gave him no encouragement, and Cheerio went on deliriously, slipping deeper and deeper into the mire of disgrace.
“C-carn’t stand the b-b-blood. M-makes me sick. Constitutional. Affected me like that in France. I w-w-went f-funky when they needed me m-most—dr-opped out, you know—r-r-r-ran away and——”
Ho, hand cupped at the back of his ear, was drinking in every word of the broken confession, while his delighted eyes exchanged glances with the girl. Her chin had gone to a high level. Without looking at Cheerio, she said:
“Say no more. We have your number.”
“Better get to the bunkhouse,” said Ho. “This ain’t no place for a minister’s son.”
Cheerio managed somehow to come to his feet. He still felt fearfully weak and the persisting odour of blood and burnt hide made him sick beyond endurance. Limping to the gate, he paused a moment to say to the girl, with a pathetic attempt at lightness of speech:
“’Fraid I’m not cut out for cowboy life. I’d j-jolly well like to learn the g-game. I d-don’t seem exactly to fit.”
She was leaning against the corral gate. Her face was turned away, and the averted cheek was scarlet. He felt the blaze of her scornful eyes and suffered an exquisite pang of longing to see them again as sometimes, after the readings in the evening, humid and wide, they had looked back at him in the twilight.
“No, you don’t fit,” she said slowly. “It takes a man with guts to stand our life—a dead game sport, and not—not——”
She left the sentence unfinished, leaving the epithet to his imagination. She turned her back upon him. He limped to the house. For a long time he sat on the steps, his head in his hands.