"I hope the boys are to home," he went on, "for if they are it won't take us long to work these brands over. When they take 'em off my hands and I gets my wad, I'll soak it away, me--Smith. I'll hand it in at the bank, and I'll say to the dude at the winder, 'Feller,' I'll say, 'me and a little Schoolmarm are goin' to housekeepin' after while, so just hang on to that till I calls.'" Smith grinned appreciatively at the picture. "His eyes will stick out till you could snare 'em with a log-chain, for I ain't known as a marryin' man." His face sobered. "I've got to get to work and get a wad--she shot that into me straight; and she's right. I couldn't ask no woman like her to hang out her own wash in front of a two-roomed shack. I got to get the _dinero_, and between man and man, Smith, like you and me, I'm nowise particular how I gets it, so long as she don't know. I'll take any old chance, me--Smith. And dead men's eyes hasn't got the habit of follerin' me around in the dark, like some I've knowed. She'd think I was a horrible feller if--but shucks! What's done's done." He lifted his arms and stretched them toward the skyline, and his voice vibrated: "I love you, girl! I love you, and I couldn't hurt you no more nor a baby!" Before he coiled the picket-ropes and started the horses moving, he got down on his knees and took a mouthful of water from a lukewarm pool. He spat it upon the ground in disgust. "That's worse nor pizen," he declared with a grimace. "You bet I've got to strike water to-day somehow. The horses won't hardly touch this, and they're all ga'nted up for the want of it. There ought to be water over there in some of them gulches, seems-like"--he looked anxiously at the expanse stretching interminably to the northeast--"and I'll have to haze 'em along until we hit it." His tired horse seemed to sag beneath his weight as he landed heavily in the saddle; and the band of foot-sore horses, the hair of their necks and legs stiff with sweat and dust, bore little resemblance to the spirited animals that Susie had driven from the reservation. It was now no effort to keep up with them, and Smith herded them in front of him like a flock of sheep. He wondered what another day, perhaps two days more, of constant travel would do, if fifty miles or so had used them up. There was not now the fear of capture to urge him forward, but the need of reaching water was an equally great incentive to haste. Smith travelled until late in the afternoon without an audible complaint at the intense discomforts of the day. He found no water, and he ate only a handful of sugar as he rode. He journeyed constantly toward the northeast, in which direction, he thought, must be the ranch which was his destination. At each intervening gulch a hope arose that it might contain water, but always he was disappointed. Between the alkali dust and the heat of the midday sun, which was unusually hot for the time of year, his lips were cracked and his throat dry.