“And Firio rides Wrath of God,” Jack continued, nodding to a pony with a low-hung head and pendant lip, whose lugubrious expression was exaggerated by a scar.  “He looks it, don’t you think?—­always miserable, whether his nose is in the oats or we run out of water.  He is our sad philosopher, who has just as dependable a gait as P.D.  I have many theories about the psychology of his ego.  Sometimes I explain it by a desire both to escape and to pursue unhappiness, which amounts to a solemn kind of perpetual motion.  But he has a positively sweet nature.  There is no more malice in his professional mournfulness than in the cheerful humor of Jag Ear.”

“It is plain to see which is Jag Ear,” she observed, “and how he earned his name.”

Every time a burro gets into the corn, an Indian master cuts off a bit of long, furry ear as a lesson.  Before Jag Ear passed into kindlier hands he had been clipped closer than a Boston terrier.  Only a single upstanding fragment remained in token of a graded education which had availed him nothing.

“There’s no curtailing Jag Ear’s curiosity,” said Jack.  “To him, everything is worth trying.  That is why he is a born traveller.  He has been with me from Colorado to Chihuahua, on all my wanderings back and forth.”

While he spoke, Firio mounted Wrath of God and, with Jag Ear’s bells jingling, the supply division set out on the road.  Jack and Mary followed, this time riding side by side, pony nose to pony nose, in an intimacy of association impossible in the narrow mountain trail.  It was an intimacy signalized by silence.  There was an end to the mighty transports of the heights; the wells of whimsicality had dried up.  The weight of the silence seemed balancing on a brittle thread.  All the afternoon’s events aligned themselves in a colossal satire.  In the half light Jack became a gaunt and lonely figure that ought to be confined in some Utopian kindergarten.

Mary could feel her temples beating with the fear of what was waiting for him in Little Rivers, now a dark mass on the levels, just dark, without color or any attraction except the mystery that goes with the shroud of night.  She knew how he would laugh at her fears; for she guessed that he was unafraid of anything in the world which, however, was no protection from Pete Leddy’s six-shooter.

“I—­I have a right to know—­won’t you tell me how you are going to defend yourself against Pete Leddy?” she demanded, in a sudden outburst.

“I hadn’t thought of that.  Certainly, I shall leave it to Pete himself to open hostilities.  I hadn’t thought of it because I have been too busy thinking out how I was going to break a piece of news to Firio.  I have been an awful coward about it, putting it off and putting it off.  I had planned to do it on my birthday two weeks ago, and then he gave me these big silver spurs—­spent a whole month’s wages on them, think of that!  I bought this cowboy regalia to go with them.  You can’t imagine how that pleased him.  It certainly was great fun.”