When he read it, however, the smile vanished with a click of the teeth which betrayed his returning anger.  One cold, curt sentence bidding him wait until help came—­that was all.  His eye measured accusingly the wide margin left blank under the words; she had not omitted apology or explanation for lack of space, at any rate.  His face grew cynically amused again.

“Oh, certainly!  I’d roost on this side-hill for a month, if a lady told me to,” he sneered, speaking aloud as he frequently did in the solitude of the range land.  He glanced from ribbon to note, ended his indecision by stuffing the note carelessly into his coat pocket and letting the ribbon drop to the ground, and with a curl of the lips which betrayed his mental attitude toward all women and particularly toward that woman, picked up his saddle.

“I can’t seem to recollect asking that lady for help, anyway,” he summed up before he dismissed the subject from his mind altogether.  “I was trying to help her; it sure takes a woman to twist things around so they point backwards!”

He turned and glanced pityingly at Rambler, watching him with ears perked forward inquiringly.  “And I crippled a damned good horse trying to help a blamed poor specimen of a woman!” he gritted.  “And didn’t get so much as a pleasant word for it.  I’ll sure remember that!”

Rambler whinnied after him wistfully, and Ford set his teeth hard together and walked the faster, his shoulders slightly bent under the weight of the saddle.  His own physical discomfort was nothing, beside the hurt of leaving his horse out there practically helpless; for a moment his fingers rested upon the butt of his six-shooter, while he considered going back and putting an end to life and misery for Rambler.  But for all the hardness men had found in Ford Campbell, he was woman-weak where his horse was concerned.  With cold reason urging him, he laid the saddle on the ground and went back, his hand clutching grimly the gun at his hip.  Rambler’s nicker of welcome stopped him half-way and held him there, hot with guilt.

“Oh, damn it, I can’t!” he muttered savagely, and retraced his steps to where the saddle lay.  After that he almost trotted down the coulee, and he would not look back again until it struck him as odd that the nickerings of the horse did not grow perceptibly fainter.  With a queer gripping of the muscles in his throat he did turn, then, and saw Rambler’s head over the little ridge he had just crossed.  The horse was making shift to follow him rather than be left alone in that strange country.  Ford waited, his lashes glistening in the first rays of the new-risen sun, until the horse came hobbling stiffly up to him.

“You old devil!” he murmured then, his contrite tone contrasting oddly with the words he used.  “You contrary, ornery, old devil, you!” he repeated softly, rubbing the speckled nose with more affection than he had ever shown a woman.  “You’d tag along, if—­if you didn’t have but one leg to carry you!  And I was going to—­” He could not bring himself to confess his meditated deed of mercy; it seemed black-hearted treachery, now, and he stood ashamed and humbled before the dumb brute that nuzzled him with such implicit faith.