With a curse he threw the bottle at Hare, missing him narrowly. He was drunk. His eyes were bloodshot.
“If you tell father you saw me drinking I'll kill you!” he hissed, and rattling his Colt in its holster, he walked away.
Hare walked back to his bed, where he lay for a long time with his whole inner being in a state of strife. It gradually wore off as he strove for calm. The playground was deserted; no one had seen Snap's action, and for that he was glad. Then his attention was diverted by a clatter of ringing hoofs on the road; a mustang and a cloud of dust were approaching.
“Mescal and Black Bolly!” he exclaimed, and sat up quickly. The mustang turned in the gate, slid to a stop, and stood quivering, restive, tossing its thoroughbred head, black as a coal, with freedom and fire in every line. Mescal leaped off lightly. A gray form flashed in at the gate, fell at her feet and rose to leap about her. It was a splendid dog, huge in frame, almost white, wild as the mustang.
This was the Mescal whom he remembered, yet somehow different. The sombre homespun garments had given place to fringed and beaded buckskin.
“I've come for you,” she said.
“For me?” he asked, wonderingly, as she approached with the bridle of the black over her arm.
“Down, Wolf!” she cried to the leaping dog. “Yes. Didn't you know? Father Naab says you're to help me tend the sheep. Are you better? I hope so— You're quite pale.”
“I—I'm not so well,” said Hare.
He looked up at her, at the black sweep of her hair under the white band, at her eyes, like jet; and suddenly realized, with a gladness new and strange to him, that he liked to look at her, that she was beautiful.