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Weary, observing a most flagrant accent, shut his lips rather tightly together.

“Third–let me see. Oh, that about the dances; I can only say that we women, as a means of self-defence, claim the privilege of effacing undesirable, would-be partners by a certain form of rejection, which eliminates the necessity of going into unpleasant details, and–er–lets the fellow down easy.” The schoolma’am’s emphasis and English seemed to collapse together, but Weary did not notice that.

“I’m sure grateful to be let down easy,” he said softly, without looking up; his head was bent so that his hat quite concealed from the schoolma’am his face, but if she had known him longer, perhaps she would have gone carefully after that.

“As to your sneaking away from–wherever it was–surely, you ought to know about that better than I do. One must go far to outdistance dishonor, for a man’s misdeeds are sure to follow him, soon or late. I will not go into details–but you understand what I mean.”

“No,” said Weary, still with bent head, “I’ll be darned if I do. And if I did, I know about where to locate the source of all the information you’ve loaded up on. Things were going smooth as silk till Myrt Forsyth drifted out here–the red-headed little devil!”

“Mr. Davidson!” cried the schoolma’am, truly shocked.

“Oh, I’m revealing some more low, brutal instincts, I expect I’m liable to reveal a lot more if I hang around much longer.” He stopped, as if there was more he wanted to say, and was doubtful of the wisdom of saying it.

“I came over to say something–something particular–but I’ve changed my mind. I guess yuh haven’t much time to listen, and I don’t believe it would interest yuh as much as I thought it would–a while back. You just go ahead and make a bosom friend uh Myrt Forsyth, Schoolma’am, and believe every blamed lie she tells yuh. I won’t be here to argue the point. Looks to me like I’m about due to drift.”

Miss Satterly, dumb with fear of what his words might mean, sat stiffly while Weary got up and mounted Glory in a business like manner that was extremely disquieting.

“I wish you could a cared, Girlie,” he said with a droop of his unsmiling mouth and a gloom in his eyes when he looked at her. “I was a chump, I reckon, to ever imagine yuh could. Good-bye–and be good to–yourself.” He leaned to one side, swung backward his feet and Glory, obeying the signal, wheeled and bounded away.

Miss Satterly watched him gallop up the long slope and the pluckety pluckety of Glory’s fleeing feet struck heavy, numbing blows upon her heart. She wondered why she had refused to ride with him, when she did want to go–she did. And why had she been so utterly hateful, after waiting and watching, night after night, for him to come?

And just how much did he mean by being due to drift? He couldn’t be really angry–and what was he going to say–the thing he changed his mind about. Was it–Well, he would come again in a few days, and then–

PART FIVE

Weary did not go back. When the hurry of shipping was over he went to Shorty and asked for his time, much to the foreman’s astonishment and disgust. The Happy Family was incensed and wasted profanity and argument trying to make him give up the crazy notion of quitting.

It seemed to Weary that he warded off their curiosity and answered their arguments very adroitly. He was sick of punching cows, he said, and he wasn’t hankering for a chance to shovel hay another winter to an ungrateful bunch of bawling calves. He was going to drift, for a change–but he didn’t know where. It didn’t much matter, so long as he got a change uh scenery. He just merely wanted to knock around and get the alkali dust out of his lungs and see something grow besides calves and cactus. His eyes plumb ached for sight of an apple tree with real, live apples on it–that weren’t wrapped up in a paper napkin.