Page:Morley roberts--Painted Rock.djvu/179

 fool in Texas; I've more square miles of idiocy in my territoary than any man I know."

And Jerome relented.

"You done your best," he said. "If he'd crawled down it would ha' bin all right."

Jack shook his head.

"That's where the flaw was," he said. "And now I'll face the music of Mamie's voice, like a man if I can." And when he got to the Griggs' house, and found Mamie outside, he showed his courage by hastily dropping the letter into her hand and driving the spurs into his pony.

"I wonder why he did that?" asked the belle of Scurry County, as she saw him galloping as hard as a stampeding steer down the trail to the creek.

And when she had read Mary's letter she knew.

"I wish he had stayed," said Mamie, and the manner in which she said it was a promise of a hot day for Jack when next she saw him, unless indeed something happened before then to moderate her justifiable wrath.