“A little too much hawse, maybe,” said ’Rome Ojeda, smoothly. “Change with Mr. Wolcott, somebody with a quieter cayuse!”
Two or three of the riders promptly dismounted and came forward, but Dean Wolcott shook his head. “Thank you,” he said, stubbornly, “I shall ride this horse or none.” He sounded blatantly dramatic to his own ears. Why hadn’t he laughed it off, made determined comedy of the situation, made them laugh with him, instead of at him? He hated himself for the bombastic attitude he had struck; he hated ’Rome Ojeda and his quivering red roan; he hated his own fatuous folly of weakening the evening before under Ginger’s lips and promising her to make this ghastly fiasco; he was not at all sure that he didn’t hate Ginger.
Old Estrada came forward, respectful, helpful. Dean was fitted out with spurs and quirt, the horse was firmly held until the rider was solidly in the saddle, his feet braced, the reins in a tense grip. But now Snort, as if he had had his little joke, conducted himself in what was, for him, a staid and dignified manner; he pranced, he curvetted, he tossed his handsome head, but he made no effort to dislodge his passenger, and Dean, his head aching dully, his aching body intolerably jolted and jarred, followed in the wake of the procession.
The old mayordomo, riding beside him, explained. They were to drive two hundred and forty steers—two-year-olds that he and his men had been bringing in from the remote pastures—to the shipping point—approximately eighteen miles. On the way back they would collect close to two hundred yearlings and bring them back to the main ranch. It sounded, on the Spaniard’s lips, as simple as hailing a taxicab and driving down Tremont Street.
The other riders, Ginger among them, had spurred ahead. Dean could see through the steadily brightening light that the vaqueros were opening the gates of the great corrals, releasing sluggish, slow-moving, brown streams.
Estrada said softly in his heavily accented English. “Eef you kip near to me, I weel tell you all, Señor.”
“Thank you,” said Dean, civilly. “You are very kind.”
He was very kind, the black-eyed old mayordomo; there was no scorn in his hawklike gaze, nothing but the most respectful desire to be of service. Let others forget that here among them rode—however clumsily—the friend and comrade of his young señor, Alejandrino McVeagh; Vincente Estrada would not forget.
They came up with the other riders, with the brown stream. It was not sluggish now; there were waves, breakers. Brown, twisting, turning bodies, tossing horns, wild eyes; ceaseless bellowing; dust. Ginger and her vaqueros and her neighbors rode on the edges of the stream, shouting, waving their sombreros, now spurring ahead to guard a gate, now in sudden, swallow-swift pursuit of a bolting steer, passing him, turning him, heading him back into the herd.
Dean Wolcott tried to detach himself from the spectacle, to regard it objectively—something whose like he had never seen before, and never would see—but of course, he told himself, after he married Ginger he would often see this sort of thing. She would, he supposed, insist on coming back to her ranch occasionally, unless he could persuade her to sell it. He sought to see her in the frame and with the background of Boston; it was actually the first time, since that moment when they stood midway on Aleck’s bridge, that he had done this. The realization came sharply that he had been looking into a kaleidoscope for two glowing and highly colored weeks. On his summer vacations, when he was a small and quiet child, he had visited at an uncle’s Connecticut farm, and—better than the out-of-doors—he had loved the cool dimness of the big “Front Room.”