"No."
A prairie dog rose up in front of them and chattered. They both stared at him. Bowers reached over and took her gloved fingers between his two palms--in the same fashion a loyal subject might have touched his queen's hand.
"That's a great thing you said to me, Miss Kate. I never expected any such honor ever to come to me. I'd crawl through cut glass and cactus for you. I guess you know it, too, but anything like that would be a mistake, Miss Kate. I ain't in your class."
"My class!" bitterly. "What is my class? I'm in one by myself--I don't belong anywhere." She paused a moment, then went on: "We needn't pretend to love each other--we're not hypocrites, but we understand each other, our interests are the same, we are good friends, at least, and in the experiment there might be something better than our present existence."
"I want to see you happy," he replied slowly. "I haven't any other wish, and, right or wrong, I'll do anything you say, but I'm as shore as we're settin' here that you'll never find it with me. I thought--I hoped that Disston feller--"
She interrupted sharply: "Don't, Bowers, don't!"
Understanding grew in his troubled eyes as he looked at her quivering chin and mouth.
"So that was it!" he reflected.
Thick volumes of smoke rolled up from the engine attached to the mixed train that stood on the side-track which paralleled the shipping corrals at Prouty, to sink again in the heavy atmosphere presaging a storm. The clouds were leaden and sagged with the weight of snow about to fall.
Teeters's cattle bawled in the three front cars and the remaining "double deckers" were being loaded with Kate Prentice's sheep. She had followed her early judgment in cutting down the number of her sheep for a hard winter and, in consequence, the engine had steam up to haul the longest stock train that had ever pulled out of Prouty.
Bowers and his helpers were crowding the sheep up the runway into the last car when Kate rode up. She looked with pride at the mass of broad woolly backs as she sat with her arms folded on the saddle horn and thought to herself that if there were any better range sheep going into Omaha she would like to see them. She had made no mistake when she had graded up her herds with Rambouillets.
Bowers saw her and left the chute.
"Teeters is sick," he announced, coming up.
Kate's face grew troubled. She and Teeters had shipped together ever since they had had anything to ship, for it had been mutually advantageous in many ways; but particularly to herself, since he looked after her interests and saved her the necessity of making the trip to the market herself.