"Folks I knew up in the Palo Verde country. They was stuck on each other
like two stamps at the end of a day's ride in a sweaty pocket; allus
that close up walkin', standin' or settin', you had to walk around 'em
twice to find the jine."
"An' after they was married?" Jake questioned.
Sliver scratched his head. "You-all mightn't believe it, but you c'd
have fired a charge of buckshot between 'em at long range without
hittin' either."
Jake nodded. "I'd have allowed as much. But these ain't that kind. Did
you see how she deviled him all through breakfast? Well, she'll keep him
on aidge that-a-way all his life. He'll never get all at once; never
quite reach the end. They'll allus be something beyond."
"Say!" Sliver looked at him in dumb wonder. "Fer an old bachelor you
know a heap. Where'd you learn it?"
"Where any man learns it--from a woman." A shadow swept, for a moment,
the reckless face. "On'y--I didn't have sense enough to stay be my
teacher."
Just then Gordon overtook them, but while helping them to saddle up--for
it was his day on guard--Sliver curiously watched Jake. When, moreover,
he mounted to the watch-tower above the gates and saw Lee and Gordon
ride away, the sight accentuated a new feeling, one of a vacancy in his
being which, so far, a long succession of fluffy, blondined ladies had
somehow failed to fill.
Their strongly perfumed memory set his head wagging over that problem in
morals which has puzzled wiser heads. "Ain't Natur' the fickle jade,
a-setting a man to fall dead in love with one girl while he's still
terrible fond of two dozen? Why kedn't she a' b'en more single-minded?"
His brooding over these inconsistencies was suddenly disrupted by a
flash of doubt, so pronounced as to be almost alarm. Lee and Gordon were
now silhouetted against the sky-line. They were, however, no longer at
correct riding distance. Eyes less keen than Sliver's could easily have
perceived they were holding hands. He drew the phenomenon to the
attention of Jake, who just then came riding from under the arch.
"Say," he called down, "d'you allow it's all right for them two to go
off that-a-way by themselves?"