“Hell!” shouted Blade, and he threw up his hands in helpless rage.
Tappan felt a depth stirred within him. He lost his late taciturnity and silent aloofness fell away from him. Blade seemed on the moment no longer an enemy. He loomed as an aid to the saving of Jenet. Tappan burst into speech.
“I can’t go without her. It’d never enter my head. Jenet’s mother was a good faithful burro. I saw Jenet born way down there on the Rio Colorado. She wasn’t strong. An’ I had to wait for her to be able to walk. An’ she grew up. Her mother died, an’ Jenet an’ me packed it alone. She wasn’t no ordinary burro. She learned all I taught her. She was different. But I treated her same as any burro. An’ she grew with the years. Desert men said there never was such a burro as Jenet. Called her Tappan’s burro, an’ tried to borrow an’ buy an’ steal her.... How many times in ten years Jenet has done me a good turn I can’t remember. But she saved my life. She dragged me out of Death Valley.... An’ then I forgot my debt. I ran off with a woman an’ left Jenet to wait as she had been trained to wait.... Well, I got back in time.... An’ now I’ll not leave her here. It may be strange to you, Blade, me carin’ this way. Jenet’s only a burro. But I won’t leave her.”
“Man, you talk like thet lazy lop-eared burro was a woman,” declared Blade, in disgusted astonishment.
“I don’t know women, but I reckon Jenet’s more faithful than most of them.”
“Wal, of all the stark, starin’ fools I ever run into you’re the worst.”
“Fool or not, I know what I’ll do,” retorted Tappan. The softer mood left him swiftly.
“Haven’t you sense enough to see thet we can’t travel with your burro?” queried Blade, patiently controlling his temper. “She has little hoofs, sharp as knives. She’ll cut through the crust. She’ll break through in places. An’ we’ll have to stop to haul her out—mebbe break through ourselves. Thet would make us longer gettin’ out.”
“Long or short we’ll take her.”
Then Blade confronted Tappan as if suddenly unmasking his true meaning. His patient explanation meant nothing. Under no circumstances would he ever have consented to an attempt to take Jenet out of that snow-bound wilderness. His eyes gleamed.