At this pace she
rocked on over mile after mile of desert through the moonhaze, but never
a token of the cowpunchers came on her. Twice she was on the verge of
turning back; twice she shook her head and urged the mare on again. Hour
upon hour had slipped by her. Perhaps Hervey long since had given up the
chase and turned towards the ranch. In the meantime, so much alike was
all the ground she covered that she seemed to be riding on a treadmill
but yet she could not return.
The moon floated higher and higher as the night grew old and at length
there was a dim lightening in the east which foretold dawn, but Marianne
kept on. If she lost the mares it would be very much like losing her
last claim to the respect of her father. She could see him, in prospect,
shrug his shoulders and roll another cigarette; above all she could see
Lew Hervey smile with a suppressed wisdom. Both of them had, from the
first, not only disapproved of the long price of the Coles horses, but
of their long legs as well and their "damned high heads." She had kept
telling herself fiercely that before long, when the mares were used to
mountain ways and trails, she would ride one of them against the pick of
Hervey's saddle ponies and at the end of a day he would know how much
blood counts in horse flesh! But if that chance were lost to her with
the mares themselves--she did not know where she could find the courage
to go back and face the people at the ranch.
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