"Lordy me! I must be a hoodoo, where women are concerned," he said,
kicking the smoking stub of a bush into the blaze. "Soon as one crosses
my trail, she goes and disappears off the face of the earth!" He fumbled
for his tobacco and papers. It was a "dry camp" he was making that
night, and a smoke would have to serve for a supper. He held his book of
papers absently while he stared hard at the fire.
"It ain't such a bad hoodoo," he mused. "I can spare this particular
girl just as easy as not; and the other one, too, for that matter."
After a minute spent in blowing apart the thin leaves and selecting a
paper:
"Queer where she got to--and it's a darned mean trick to play on a man
that was just trying to help her out of a fix. Why, I wouldn't treat a
stray dog that way! Darn these women!"
CHAPTER VI
The Problem of Getting Somewhere
Dawn came tardily after a long, cheerless night, during which the wind
whined over the prairie and the stars showed dimly through a shifting
veil of low-sweeping clouds. Ford had not slept much, for hunger and
cold make poor bedfellows, and all the brush he could glean on that
barren hillside, with the added warmth of his saddle-blanket wrapped
about him, could no more make him comfortable than could cigarettes
still the gnawing of his hunger.
Pages:
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87