My horse was hungry, and wanted to get back to the ranch. I was hungry too, but dared not go. I had left my husband lying drunk on the kitchen floor, and when he woke up it would be worse than that.
For miles I had followed the edge of the bench lands, searching for the place, for the right place, some point where the rocks went sheer, twelve hundred feet into the river. There must be nothing to break the fall, no risk of being alive, of being taken back there, of seeing him again. But the edge was never sheer, and perhaps after all, the place by the Soda Spring was best. There the trail from the ranch goes at a sharp turn, over the edge of the cliffs and down to the ferry. Beyond there are three great bull pines on a headland, and the cliff is sheer for at least five hundred feet. That should be far enough.
I let my horse have a drink at the spring, then we went slowly on over the soundless carpet of pine needles. I would leave my horse at the pines.
Somebody was there. Four laden pack-ponies stood in the shade of the trees, switching their tails to drive away the flies. A fifth, a buckskin mare, unloaded, with a bandaged leg, stood in the sunlight. Behind the nearest tree a man was speaking. I reined my horse. "Now you, Jones," he was saying to the injured beast, "you take yo'self too serious. You ain't goin' to Heaven? No! Then why pack yo' bag? Why fuss?"
I had some silly idea that the man, if he discovered me, would know what business brought me to this headland. I held my breath.
"And since you left yo' parasol to home, Jones, come in under out of the sun. Come on, you sun-struck orphan."
His slow, delicious, Texan drawl made me smile. I did not want to smile. The mare, a very picture of misery, lifted her bandaged, frightfully swollen leg, and hobbled into the shade. I did not want to laugh, but why was she called Jones? She looked just like a Jones.
"The inquirin' mind," said the man behind the tree, "has gawn surely astray from business, or you'd have know'd that rattlers smells of snake. Then I asks—why paw?"
His voice had so curious a timbre of aching sympathy. He actually began to argue with the mare. "I've sucked out the pizen, Jones, hacked it out with my jack-knife, blowed it out with powder, packed yo' pastern with clay—best kind of clay—millionaires cayn't buy it. And I've took off your cargo. Now what more kin I do? Feedin' bottle's to home, and we're out of cough mixture. Why, what on airth—"
The mare, with her legs all astraddle, snorted in his face.