While it burned he looked for her, and when it grew to
black cinders and was near to scorching his hand, he made another and
looked farther. He laid aside his dignity and called, and while his
voice went booming full-lunged through the whispering silence of that
empty land, he twisted the third torch, and stamped the embers of the
second into the earth that it might not fire the prairie.
There was no dodging the fact; the girl was gone. When Ford was
perfectly sure of it, he stamped the third torch to death with vicious
heels, went back to the horse, and urged him to limp up the hill. He did
not say anything then or think anything much; at least, he did not think
coherently. He was so full of a wordless rage against the girl, that he
did not at first feel the need of expression. She had made a fool of
him.
He remembered once shooting a big, beautiful, blacktail doe. She had
dropped limply in her tracks and lain there, and he had sauntered up and
stood looking at her stretched before him. He was out of meat, and the
doe meant all that hot venison steaks and rich, brown gravy can mean to
a man meat-hungry.
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