Miss Satterly, dumb with fear of what his words might mean, sat stiffly while Weary got up and mounted Glory in a business like manner that was extremely disquieting.

“I wish you could a cared, Girlie,” he said with a droop of his unsmiling mouth and a gloom in his eyes when he looked at her.  “I was a chump, I reckon, to ever imagine yuh could.  Good-bye—­and be good to—­yourself.”  He leaned to one side, swung backward his feet and Glory, obeying the signal, wheeled and bounded away.

Miss Satterly watched him gallop up the long slope and the pluckety pluckety of Glory’s fleeing feet struck heavy, numbing blows upon her heart.  She wondered why she had refused to ride with him, when she did want to go—­she did.  And why had she been so utterly hateful, after waiting and watching, night after night, for him to come?

And just how much did he mean by being due to drift?  He couldn’t be really angry—­and what was he going to say—­the thing he changed his mind about.  Was it—­Well, he would come again in a few days, and then—­

PART FIVE

Weary did not go back.  When the hurry of shipping was over he went to Shorty and asked for his time, much to the foreman’s astonishment and disgust.  The Happy Family was incensed and wasted profanity and argument trying to make him give up the crazy notion of quitting.

It seemed to Weary that he warded off their curiosity and answered their arguments very adroitly.  He was sick of punching cows, he said, and he wasn’t hankering for a chance to shovel hay another winter to an ungrateful bunch of bawling calves.  He was going to drift, for a change—­but he didn’t know where.  It didn’t much matter, so long as he got a change uh scenery.  He just merely wanted to knock around and get the alkali dust out of his lungs and see something grow besides calves and cactus.  His eyes plumb ached for sight of an apple tree with real, live apples on it—­that weren’t wrapped up in a paper napkin.

When was he coming back?  Well, now, that was a question; he hadn’t got started yet, man.  What he was figuring on wasn’t the coming back part, but the getting started.

The schoolma’am?  Oh, he guessed she could get along without him, all right.  Seeing they mentioned her, would some of them tell her hello for him—­and so long?

This last was at the station, where they had ridden in a body to see him off.  Weary waved his hat as long as the town was in sight, and the Happy Family ran their horses to keep pace with the train when it pulled out, emptied their six-shooters into the air and yelled parting words till the Pullman windows were filled with shocked, Eastern faces, eager to see a real, wild cowboy on his native soil.