Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/216

 changed suddenly to injured lamentation. "What made you want to turn on us this way and ruin us all?"

Bill looked at the road, his long face as solemn as if his last hope lay in the dust at his horse's feet. He sat that way in his meditative posture a little while, her beseeching, sorrowfully regretful words echoing in his ears.

"I stood there and sweat blood to keep my hand off of my gun"—looking up with disconcerting suddenness—"I took what he—what they said with my teeth shut on my tongue, and I rode away with a bullet singin' over my head. I let 'em cuss me and belittle me, and tell me what kind of big men they needed to keep Texas cattle out of here, and then I headed over that river swearin' I'd show him—show them if I wasn't man enough to help keep 'em out I was man enough to bring 'em in. I didn't so much consider the consequences then, for I was sore—I was sore to the bone."

He turned his earnest face away, to look off toward the south as if for the evidence that would prove to her he had made good on his intention. But the herd was many miles away; its dust was not rising high enough, if rising at all, to be seen at that great distance.

"Maybe I was wrong," he said, "but I was tired of bein' the under dog. I had to bear that long enough when I was a starved, cowed boy, picked on and kicked around by the bigger and richer fellers when I wasn't able to help myself. I put them days behind me when I came out here— Excuse me, Miss Zora."

He cooled off suddenly, as if he had became alarmed at showing that corner of his heart. The red embers