“... don’t like a hair of his red haid, but that’s how it’ll be far as I’m concerned.”
There was a moment’s awkward silence. Dillon knew they had been talking about him. Beneath the deep gold of his blond skin Hollister flushed. Boy though he was, Dud usually had the self-possession of the Sphinx. But momentarily he was embarrassed.
“Hello, fellow!” he shouted across the room. “How’d she go?”
“All right, I reckon,” Bob answered. “I wasn’t much use.”
He wanted to ask Dud a question, but he dared not ask it before anybody else. It hung in his mind all through supper. Afterward he found his chance. He did not look at Hollister while he spoke.
“Did—did you hear how—Miss Tolliver is?” he asked.
“Doc says he can’t tell a thing yet. She’s still mighty sick. But Blister he sent word to you that he’d let you know soon as there is a change.”
“Much obliged.”
Bob moved away. He did not want to annoy anybody by pressing his undesirable society upon him.
That night he slept like a hibernating bear. The dread of the morrow was no longer so heavy upon him. Drowsily, while his eyes were closing, he recalled the prediction of the fat justice that no experience is as bad as one’s fears imagine it will be. That had been true to-day at least. Even his fight with the sorrel, the name of which he had later discovered to be Powder River, was now only a memory which warmed and cheered.