CHAPTER XIX.
A VILLON OF THE DESERT
When Alice Mackenzie looked back in after years upon the incidents connected with that ride to the Rocking Chair, it was always with a kind of glorified pride in her villain-hero. He had his moments, had this twentieth-century Villon, when he represented not unworthily the divinity in man; and this day held more than one of them. Since he was what he was, it also held as many of his black moods.
The start was delayed, owing to a cause Leroy had not foreseen. When York went, sleepy-eyed, to the corral to saddle the ponies, he found the bars into the pasture let down, and the whole remuda kicking up its heels in a paddock large as a goodsized city. The result was that it took two hours to run up the bunch of ponies and another half-hour to cut out, rope, and saddle the three that were wanted. Throughout the process Reilly sat on the fence and scowled.
Leroy, making an end of slapping on and cinching the last saddle, wheeled suddenly on the Irishman. “What’s the matter, Reilly?”
“Was I saying anything was the matter?”
“You’ve been looking it right hard. Ain’t you man enough to say it instead of playing dirty little three-for-a-cent tricks—like letting down the corral-bars?”
Reilly flung a look at Neil that plainly demanded support, and then descended with truculent defiance from the fence.
“Who says I let down the bars? You bet I am man enough to say what I think; and if ye think I ain’t got the nerve—”
His master encouraged him with ironic derision. “That’s right, Reilly. Who’s afraid? Cough it up and show York you’re game.”
“By thunder, I am game. I’ve got a kick coming, sorr.”