Mrs. du Preez had groaned and sat down for the fourth or fifth time in three miles and Mr. Bailey's patience was running dry. For himself, the trudge through the oppression of the sun was not a new experience; he was inured to its discomforts and pains by many years of use while he had been a pilgrim from door to distant door of the charitable and credulous, and he had gathered a certain adeptness in the arts of the trek. He had set a good lively pace for this journey, partly because a single vigorous stage would see them at the railway line, but also because he sincerely believed in Christian du Preez's willingness to shoot him, and was concerned to be beyond the range of that vengeance. Therefore, at this halt, he turned and swore.
Mrs. du Preez fanned herself feebly with one hand while the other still held the little bundle that contained her money.
"I can't help it, Bailey," she said painfully. "I mus' have a rest. I 'm done."
"Done." He spat. "Bet I could make you walk if I started. Are you goin' to come on?"
She shook her head slowly, with closed eyes.
"I can't," she said. "I mus' jus'—have a sit down, Bailey."
Her elaborate hat nodded drunkenly on her head, and all the dust of the long road could not make her clothes at home in the center of the wide circle of dumb and forsaken land in which she sat, surrendered to her weariness, but never relaxing her hold on her money. Not once since their setting out had she loosed her grip on that, save when she changed the burden of it from one hand to the other. Her faith was in the worth and power of that double handful of sovereigns, and she would have felt poorer on a desert island by the loss of a single one of them.
"I 've been patient with you," Boy Bailey said, looking at her fixedly. "I 've been very patient with you. But it 's about time there was an end of this two-steps-and-a-squat business. There 's no knowing what minute that husband of yours might come ridin' up with his gun."
"I 'll be—all right—soon," she said. "Give me a half hour, Bailey."
"Take your own time," he replied. "Take all the time there is. Only—I 'm goin' on."