She was pallid, and the firelight
stained her skin with touches of tropic gold, and cast a halo of the
golden hair about her face. She seemed like one of those statues wrought
in the glory and the rich days of Athens in ivory and in gold--some
goddess who has heard the tidings of the coming fall, the change of the
old order, and sits passive in her throne waiting the doom from which
there is no escape. Something of this filtered through to the sad heart
of Buck Daniels. He, too, had no hope--nay, he had not even her small
hope, but somehow he was able to pity her and cherish the picture of her
in that gloomy place. It seemed to Buck Daniels that he would give ten
years from the best of his life to see her smile as he had once seen her
in those old, bright days. He went on with his tale.
"You would have busted laughin' if you'd seen him at the Circle Y Bar
roundup the way I seen him. Shorty ain't so bad with a rope. He's always
talkin' about what he can do and how he can daub a rope on anything
that's got horns. He ain't so bad, but then he ain't so good, either.
Specially, he ain't so good at ridin'--you know what bowed legs he's
got, Kate?"
"I remember, Buck."
She was looking at him, at last, and he talked eagerly to turn that look
into a smile.
"Well, they was the three of us got after one two year old--a bull and a
bad 'un. Shorty was on one side and me and Cuttle was on the other side.
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