“Hold on! Hold on! I’m a-comin’! Hold on!” There was, on the surface, hearty reassurance in it; underneath, he knew, there was sneering scorn. He came up with him, nearer, nearer, exactly like a rescuer in a wild west film, came abreast of him, reached out, caught hold of Snort, pulled him to a standstill, turned back his head so that he could not buck. “He sure was goin’ wicked,” he said, gently. “He sure was goin’ wicked.”
If Ginger had seen it, she gave no sign. Estrada came back to ride beside him. “Ur-r-ra!” he said soothingly to the wild young steers. “Ur-rrr-ra! Ur-rr-ra!”
No one spoke to Dean Wolcott and he spoke to no one. He was too much occupied with his black and seething hatred of ’Rome Ojeda. He had been rescued, moving-picture style; moving-picture style he was hating his rival, his rival who had shown him up; he was wishing passionately that he might get even with him. He groped for his sense of humor, of fitness. He, Dean Wolcott, hating this cow-puncher, planning to be revenged upon him— His sense of humor was gone, lost, swallowed up in the dust. Now they were back again in the old monotony; brown, twisting, turning bodies, tossing horns, wild eyes; ceaseless bellowing; the stench of hot and sweating hides; dust; enveloping, smothering dust. Ginger, save for her scarlet neckerchief and her scarlet cheeks, was covered with dust, dust-covered, dust-colored; dust-brown. Corduroy; what was it that plants and animals took on from their surroundings? (Was it possible that he was beginning to forget again?) What was it? He had learned it when he was a child. It was gone, though. No! Protective resemblance! That was what it was, and that was what Ginger’s inevitable corduroy was; it was the color of the dust, the blinding, stifling dust of this parched land of summer; protective resemblance; dust; corduroy.
“Señor, we are here! We are arrive’ at home, Señor! Do you not weesh to get down?” It was Estrada, dismounted, standing beside him, and they were just below the veranda of the old adobe at Dos Pozos. “Señor, are you seek?”
He was not sick, he told him. (He was really not even suffering any longer; it was some time, now, since there had been any feeling at all in his arms or his legs.) “Yes, I wish to get down,” he said with dignity. He wanted to keep his dignity; ’Rome Ojeda was watching him, and Ginger was watching him, and the ranchers were watching him.
“Ees a long, hard day, Señor,” said Estrada, softly.
It was almost dusk now, and they had set out soon after dawn. “Oh—somewhat,” said Dean Wolcott, jauntily. “Rather long, of course, but very interesting.” Then he got down from his horse and stood for a moment, smiling uncertainly at the old Spaniard before he dropped to the warm earth for the second time that day. This time he had fainted.
CHAPTER VI
GINGER could understand bullets; she could understand a broken arm or leg or collar bone; a broken neck was entirely comprehensible to her. But she could not understand fainting; not, above all, a man’s fainting.
As soon as she was sure that he was not dead (she had heard of sudden death by heart failure) she was not aware of any feeling but deep chagrin. She did not follow when he was helped into the house and to his room by Estrada and ’Rome Ojeda; she sent old Manuela to him but she did not go herself. She went instead to her room and got out of her dust-grimed riding things and under a cold shower, and into one of the evening frocks which her Aunt Fan had made her buy. It was the scarlet one, and she piled her dark hair high and put in her carved ivory comb which had come down to her from her Valdés grandmother, and put a red flower behind her ear, and regarded herself in her small mirror with hearty and entire satisfaction. Not three times in her life had she ever dressed herself so painstakingly, or been so pleased with the result.