No one spoke to Dean Wolcott and he spoke to no one. He was too much occupied with his black and seething hatred of ’Rome Ojeda. He had been rescued, moving-picture style; moving-picture style he was hating his rival, his rival who had shown him up; he was wishing passionately that he might get even with him. He groped for his sense of humor, of fitness. He, Dean Wolcott, hating this cow-puncher, planning to be revenged upon him-- His sense of humor was gone, lost, swallowed up in the dust. Now they were back again in the old monotony; brown, twisting, turning bodies, tossing horns, wild eyes; ceaseless bellowing; the stench of hot and sweating hides; dust; enveloping, smothering dust. Ginger, save for her scarlet neckerchief and her scarlet cheeks, was covered with dust, dust-covered, dust-colored; dust-brown. Corduroy; what was it that plants and animals took on from their surroundings? (Was it possible that he was beginning to _forget_ again?) What was it? He had learned it when he was a child. It was gone, though. No! _Protective resemblance!_ That was what it was, and that was what Ginger’s inevitable corduroy was; it was the color of the dust, the blinding, stifling dust of this parched land of summer; protective resemblance; dust; corduroy. “_Señor_, we are here! We are arrive’ at home, _Señor_! Do you not weesh to get down?” It was Estrada, dismounted, standing beside him, and they were just below the veranda of the old _adobe_ at Dos Pozos. “_Señor_, are you seek?” He was not sick, he told him. (He was really not even suffering any longer; it was some time, now, since there had been any feeling at all in his arms or his legs.) “Yes, I wish to get down,” he said with dignity. He wanted to keep his dignity; ’Rome Ojeda was watching him, and Ginger was watching him, and the ranchers were watching him. “Ees a long, hard day, _Señor_,” said Estrada, softly. It was almost dusk now, and they had set out soon after dawn. “Oh--somewhat,” said Dean Wolcott, jauntily. “Rather long, of course, but very interesting.” Then he got down from his horse and stood for a moment, smiling uncertainly at the old Spaniard before he dropped to the warm earth for the second time that day. This time he had fainted. CHAPTER VI GINGER could understand bullets; she could understand a broken arm or leg or collar bone; a broken neck was entirely comprehensible to her. But she could not understand fainting; not, above all, a man’s fainting.