“Collishaw, I’ve been told you wanted me,” said Adam.
“Hello, Larey! Yes, I was inquirin’ aboot you,” replied Collishaw, with the accent of a Texan.
“What do you want of me?” asked Adam.
Collishaw drew Adam aside out of earshot of the other men.
“It’s a matter of thet little gamblin’ debt you owe Guerd,” he replied, in low voice.
“Collishaw, are you threatening me with some such job as you put up on that poor greaser?” inquired Adam, sarcastically, as he waved his hand up the canyon.
Probably nothing could have surprised this hardened sheriff, but he straightened up with a jerk and shed his confidential and admonishing air.
“No, I can’t arrest you on a gamblin’ debt,” he replied, bluntly, “but I’m shore goin’ to make you pay.”
“You are, like hell!” retorted Adam. “What had you to do with it? If Guerd owed you money in that game, I’m not responsible. And I didn’t pay because I caught Guerd cheating. I’m not much of a gambler, Collishaw, but I’ll bet you a stack of gold twenties against your fancy vest that Guerd never collects a dollar of his crooked deal.”
With that Adam turned on his heel and strode off toward the river. His hard-earned independence added something to the wrong done him by these men. He saw himself in different light. The rankling of the injustice he had suffered at Ehrenberg had softened only in regard to the girl in the case. Remembering her again, it seemed her part in his alienation from Guerd did not loom so darkly and closely. Margarita had come between that affair and the present hour. This other girl had really been nothing to him, but Margarita had become everything. A gratefulness, a big, generous warmth, stirred in Adam’s heart for the dark-eyed Mexican girl. What did it matter who she was? In this desert he must learn to adjust differences of class and race and habit in relation to the wildness of time and place.