"When a feller is getting old and ain't got long to live--"

"You quit that kind of talk right now. I won't stand for it."

It was the first time she had been really angry at any of his frequent sallies concerning Floyd, and it put them at once on a different footing. The safe frankness of raillery was gone.

Alas, that Lafe could draw the line so sharply between business and the courtesies of leisure hours. A trail herd arrived. They plied Johnson with strong drink and worked in relays to get him drunk. He partook sociably, but without noticeable impairment of his faculties, and he cut the herd ruthlessly to a remnant. The boss grew dizzy figuring his losses and departed from the roundup, unable to endure the spectacle without interference, leaving instructions to be notified when the fool was done.

"I'm working for Horne," said Lafe cheerfully. "Did you think I couldn't tell a two-year-old from a three, Floyd? Those boys tried to run a bunch by me."

Mrs. Tracey drove over to the Floyd headquarters twice, on matters relating to a recipe for a cake and certain patterns, and then asked her friend and Mr. Johnson to dinner. She invited Floyd, too, but it was done so perfunctorily that Sally felt the stab and was furious. However, she went. The widow was as sleek as a kitten and wore such a secretive air that Mrs. Floyd had much ado to keep her temper during the meal.

Afterward, Mrs. Tracey excused herself for a few minutes on some pretext and left them alone in the sitting-room. When she had to pa.s.s through on her way upstairs, she hurried as though intruding, and said: "Oh, I beg your pardon!"

"The cat!" Mrs. Floyd cried, gritting her teeth.

"There wasn't no call for her to say that?"

"Of course there wasn't, b.o.o.by. That doesn't make it any better. It makes it worse."

Two days later: "Now guess what?"

"I done quit guessing," Johnson answered.

"That Tracey woman tried to tell me this morning that my Tom was too friendly with one of those Baptismo girls."

"Pshaw!" said Lafe. "Pshaw! What does she want to go and tell them lies for? What good does it do?"

"You don't see?"

"I reckon I'm dull."

"Oh, you great baby!" Mrs. Floyd gurgled delightedly.

This display of malice disturbed Lafe greatly. Such weapons were beyond his knowledge and capacity, and he felt hotly uncomfortable when Sally intimated that they might expect Mrs. Tracey to be talking of them next--if, indeed, she had not done so already. She was for going to Rowdy Canon without delay to bestow a tongue-lashing on the widow.

"What's the use?" the cowboy said. "Her talk can't hurt n.o.body. They all know you."

"Some people will believe her."

"Some people will do anything. Never bother with poor trash, Sally. It don't matter what that kind thinks. Leave her be. What can you expect from a pig but a grunt?"

That was no way to speak of a lady, but Mrs. Floyd jumped from her chair and cried "Goody!", greatly consoled. Just before the evening meal, she put on a pink dress for which Lafe had professed admiration, and parted her hair in the middle. Had there been a woman within seven miles, she would not have done this, but Lafe liked it that way. So also did her husband, for that matter.

"As if I'd get jealous of Tom!" she sniffed. "Huh! you won't get Lafe that way, my lady."

I have said that they rode together every day. Sometimes Floyd watched the two meditatively. His instructions were being carried out--no doubt of that--and Johnson was good-natured. But the boss was a silent man and opposed no objection. As for Sally, if she gave it a thought at all, she probably found justification in a dozen reasons a woman would appreciate, which are beyond male ken.

Lafe helped her down from her horse late one afternoon, though she needed no help. And he held her for just the fraction of a second. She stiffened with an injured air, but she did not reprove him. On another occasion--they were on the veranda and it was growing to dusk--after staring helplessly at her for a full quarter of an hour, while she purposely said as little as possible and toyed with the lace of her handkerchief, her head on one side that he might get the benefit of her profile--suddenly he seized her in his arms and tried to kiss her. He did, in fact, obtain the merest peck at the tip of her ear.

"You darn fool!" she said, tearing loose.

Then she saw his face, and went hastily indoors and huddled in a chair in a dark corner. She sat there until called to supper, striving to fix recent happenings in proper sequence.

After putting the baby to bed, she beckoned Lafe on to the veranda. Her manner was hurried.

"Lafe, you've got to go away. You've got to go to-morrow."

"Why? I can't, Sally. There's three thousand more--"

"You must! You must! Can't you see? You've got to go. We're--"

"Sure, I see," he said. It was very dark and he came closer. "You care!

That's what it is. You used to, Sally, and you do now."

"Lafe, let me go! Please--please!"

She broke away and gained the door. She was panting. In the lighted entrance, she looked back.

"You've got to go to-morrow, remember," she said faintly.

But he did not go on the morrow. Floyd was astir before dawn--he usually fell asleep on a sofa immediately after his supper, thereby gaining a few hours on everyone else--and rode away with ten men to bring up the last herd of the sixteen thousand head he would ship.

Sally was distrait and restless all day. She punished the baby for upsetting a pitcher, and then ordered the Mexican nurse to take him and keep him out of her sight. Johnson stayed away from the house and busied himself at the corrals, where some newly purchased mules were being broken to harness for his employer. He never gave an order, yet the boys obeyed his slow-voiced suggestions with the same prompt.i.tude they gave to the boss's crisp commands. Lafe could always get obedience without visible exercise of authority. He knew his business and followed it without fl.u.s.ter.

At sunset, a cloud of dust whirled madly across country, with the rain close behind it. Sally ate alone--Lafe had evidently stayed at the bunkhouse--and she felt vaguely resentful. About nine she tucked the child into his bed and went out on to the veranda. The wind was dying, and the rain fell in a soft, steady murmur.

Johnson came running along the pathway and took the steps at a jump. He was wet, but jeered at her suggestion that he change.

"Only got this one suit," he said. "If it gets to shrinking much more on me, I'll have for to steal a blanket to-morrow, Sally."

He took a chair beside her and they watched the lightning play above the black jumble of hills to the east. Sally uttered hardly a syllable.

When she spoke at all, the words came jerkily. Lafe leaned over once to brush some sparks of his cigarette from his coat. A delicate perfume reached him.

"The river," he said, clearing his throat, "the river'll be way up.

Bridge is like to go out."

"I'm afraid so. Oh, dear! Tom promised he'd come home to-night, too."

"Come home to-night? Why, it's thirty miles."

"I know it. But he's never failed to keep his word yet," she said.

"He won't come home to-night."

A writhing fork of lightning leaped from east to north. There was no thunder. They sat tensely quiet and the rain dripped sadly from the roof.

"No, he won't come home to-night," he said in a hoa.r.s.e voice. "He can't."

"Sally!" he breathed, bending toward her. "Sally!"