Page:Heart of the West (1907).djvu/171

 “I never thought I’d like you better for giving me up,” she said ardently, “but I do. I must ride back now, Ranse. I slipped out of the house and saddled Dancer myself. Good-night, neighbour.”

“Good-night,” said Ranse. “Ride carefully over them badger holes.”

They wheeled and rode away in opposite directions. Yenna turned in her saddle and called clearly: “Don’t forget I’m your half-way girl, Ranse.”

“Damn all family feuds and inherited scraps,” muttered Ranse vindictively to the breeze as he rode back to the Cibolo.

Ranse turned his horse into the small pasture and went to his own room. He opened the lowest drawer of an old bureau to get out the packet of letters that Yenna had written him one summer when she had gone to Mississippi for a visit. The drawer stuck, and he yanked at it savagely—as a man will. It came out of the bureau, and bruised both his shins—as a drawer will. An old, folded yellow letter without an envelope fell from somewhere—probably from where it had lodged in one of the upper drawers. Ranse took it to the lamp and read it curiously.

Then he took his hat and walked to one of the Mexican jacals.

“Tia Juana,” he said, “I would like to talk with you a while.”

An old, old Mexican woman, white-haired and wonderfully wrinkled, rose from a stool.