CHAPTER VIII
A COLD TRAIL
THE white-rimmed eyes of the porter rolled admiringly toward McCoy as the cattleman disappeared into the sleeper. “Some kick, b’lieve me!” he murmured to the world at large.
Rowan stopped at the section where Norma Tait sat. “I’m going forward to the day coach,” he explained. “If there’s anything I can do for you, Norma, now or at any time, I want you to call on me.”
The woman looked at him, a man from his soles up, coffee-brown, lean, steady as a ground-sunk rock. She knew his standing in the countryside. His fellows liked him, trusted him, followed him, for by the grace of Heaven he had been born a leader of men. McCoy was no plaster saint. The wild and sometimes lawless way of his kind he had trodden, but always there burned in him the dynamic spark of self-respect that lifted him above meanness, held him to loyalty and decency. It came to her with a surge of emotion that here a woman’s love could find safe anchorage. What a fool she had been to throw him aside in the pride of her youth!
“Why should I ask favours of you? What have I ever done but bring trouble and unhappiness to you?” she cried in a low voice.
“Never mind that. If there’s anything I can do for you I’m here to do it.”
She gulped down a sob. “No, you’ve done enough for me—too much. Joe will hear that you drove me to town. He’ll make trouble for you. I know him.” A faint flush of anger dyed her thin cheeks. “No, I’ll go my road and you’ll go yours. I’m an old woman already in my feelings. I’m burned out, seems like. But you’re young. Forget there was ever such a girl as Norma Davis.”
He hesitated, uncertain what to say, and while he groped she spoke again:
“There’s a girl waiting for you somewhere, Rowan. Go and find her—and marry her.”