Page:The Trail Rider (1924).pdf/323

 "Pure gold, ma'am, right down to the tacks of his boots."

Texas was troubled over Fannie's peculiar behavior as he walked toward Uncle Boley's shop. Perhaps she believed that things were finished for her in Cottonwood and had gone back to her cousin's ranch. It might be that what he had said about their ways beginning already to part had something to do with it. Maybe she had gone away thinking that he was selfish and ungrateful. Remorse at this thought came over him, to make that dark hour more bitter.

It wasn't like Fannie to leave him as long as there might be need of her testimony to clear him in the cattlemen's eyes, and she did not know at the hour she left that Stott had cleaned out the bank and gone. Something had urged her upon her lonely road, but Texas was not vain enough, sophisticated enough, even to consider that it might be her love for him, hopeless as she knew it to be.

Uncle Boley was in his door, looking down the street toward the bank. He had his apron on, and his beard tucked out of the way, signs which told Texas that he had left the bench but lately, and did not intend to allow the rascality of Henry Stott to rise up between him and his work very long.

"Well, he's run off, has he?" Uncle Boley in-