"She certainly
didn't have any excuse for throwing it into me the way she did; maybe
she's sorry for it now."
After that his anger cooled imperceptibly, and he hurried a little
faster because the day was waning with the chill haste of mid-autumn,
and he recalled what she had said at first about being afraid of
coyotes. And, although the storm of three days ago had been swept into
mere memory by that sudden chinook wind, and the days were once more
invitingly warm and hazily tranquil, night came shiveringly upon the
land and the unhoused thought longingly of hot suppers and the glow of a
fire.
The girl's horse was, he believed, just disappearing into a deep
depression half a mile farther on; but when he reached the place where
he had seen it, there was nothing in sight save a few head of cattle and
a coyote trotting leisurely up the farther slope. He went farther down
the shallow coulee, then up to the high level beyond, his rope coiled
loosely over one arm with the end dragging a foot behind him. But there
was nothing to be seen from up there, except that the sun was just a red
disk upon the far-off hills, and that the night was going to be
uncomfortably cool if that wind kept blowing from the northwest.
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