Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/44

 and they commenced the wrangling. It was hard exciting labor. The horses were wild after months of freedom; they ran up the mountain sides, with Tom like an avenging fury racing above to haze them down and Kay trying to hold them as they came. In the end, after the manner of their kind they accepted their fate, stood huddled together, and when the time came to start down took the trail in single file and thudded along as though no other thought had even entered their wise heads.

Even at that, now and then one of them would leave the trail and endeavor by circling around to get back again, but no such tactics answered with Tom. Spurs to his horse he would be off, up the steep hill side or breaking through the brush to head off the truant, and Kay would watch with a sort of agony of apprehension. But back he would come, cool and nonchalant, rolling a cigarette perhaps, and with the recalcitrant trotting meekly ahead of him.

It was at the bottom of the trail that he did a queer thing. The ranch buildings were in sight; the horses were moving on, subdued and resigned, when he stopped his horse, took off his hat and held out his hand.

"Good-bye, Kay."

So he had heard her!

"You're not going away, are you?" she asked in a small voice.

"As far as the bunk house. That's about a thousand miles from where you belong."

A moment later he was on the tails of the loose horses, whistling and calling, driving them at full gallop and leaving her to follow, alone. And that night in the bunk house he was in high spirits. Somewhere he had located a pair of old Lucius's broad-beamed riding breeches, and he appeared with them pinned around him, his hair gummed down with soap and a silver dollar stuck in his eye for a monocle.

"What I want in a horse," he said, in a fair imitation of Herbert's voice, "is scenery. The more scenery and the less horse the bettah."

The bunk house roared and rocked with laughter.