The girl rode close to her lover, bright-eyed and glowing and spoke softly. “All right, Dean? Are you all right?”
He told her he was all right. (Could he sit like an old woman at a summer resort and catalogue the number and character of his aches and strains?) He swallowed one sandwich with difficulty; no one had thought to bring a drinking cup, and besides, the steers had hopelessly muddied the creek. Well, they would be at Santa Rita in about an hour.
Dean studied Ginger and Ojeda and the rest of them with angry and grudging admiration, their boundless endurance, their lazy confidence, their utter oneness with their mounts. Then, honestly disgusted with himself, he set to work to see the thing as it was, not in its interrelationship to his own unfitness. He told himself unsparingly that he was like the type of American who goes to a foreign land and talks disparagingly about the foreigners; his sense of balance came back. He, Dean Wolcott, was the failure here. These people were integral parts of the virile picture; they fitted strongly into the high brown hills and the blue mountains far beyond, into the wide dry valleys and the deep cañons: he belonged on the pavement, in the shadow of grave buildings, art galleries, quiet clubs, dignified offices. It was absurd to let himself be overcome with such a sense of bitterness and rebellion; suppose he didn’t and couldn’t make good here, according to their crude and simple standards? Could they make good in Boston, according to his? He was weary enough to begin to quote, bromidically to himself. East was east and west was west, and never the twain— Ah, but the twain did, occasionally, brilliantly, satisfyingly, as he and Ginger had met on Aleck’s bridge, the good, simple Aleck who had opened a window into a new world for him, in the trenches; who had given him Ginger.
He looked at her through the blazing and merciless sunlight, blinking as he had done on that first morning. She was in corduroy, worn, rubbed, dusty corduroy, as were almost all of the men. It was the only wear, in this lusty land, apparently. Corduroy; corde du roi: he smiled inwardly; once, long ago, wider waled and softer, and in delicate hues, kings had favored it; wine-red, emerald-green, royal-purple, it had glowed in courts.... Now it had come down in the world—drab, utilitarian ... dust-colored, dust-covered....
They reached the shipping point at last; there was a hectic half hour of getting the steers across the concrete highway; they advanced upon it warily, putting their noses down to it, snorting, pawing, holding back against the pressure of the herd behind them; then they went with a rush, over, up and down, wild, terrified; plunging, slipping. Some one told Dean, curtly, to tie his horse and go out on foot on to the highway to stop the automobiles. It was exquisite relief and exquisite torture to be walking; it was ludicrous to feel a sudden access of power and authority, holding up his hand like a traffic policeman, seeing the cars slam on their brakes and obey him, to have people lean out and ask him questions about the cattle. He was busily useful for thirty minutes; he was doing his job as well as any man of them. Then he was hauling himself unhappily into the saddle again, and they were off.
“Got to make time while we can,” said Ginger, “before we pick up the yearlings. Let’s go!”
She was away at a swinging lope, and Snort, without notification from his rider, went after her. In spite of shrieking muscles and weeping blisters, there was a keen sense of exultation about it; he had balance, equilibrium; he was able to conceive of liking this sort of thing, loving it ... dominion....
’Rome Ojeda passed them, drew his horse back on his haunches, waited for them. “Well, goin’ to make a hand with the yearlings, Mr. Wolcott? That was easy this mornin’; they’d been moved two—three times, those steers. These young-uns are different.”
“He sure is going to make a hand, ’Rome,” said Ginger, confidently. “It’ll take all of us, and then some!”