Weary, sitting uneasily in the saddle looking at her, wondered if Irish really cared; or if, in Weary’s place, he would have sat there so calmly and just looked at her.  She was rather pretty, in a pink and white, weak way.  He could easily imagine her marrying Spikes Weber for mere spite; what he could not imagine, was Irish in love with her.

It seemed almost as if she caught a glimmer of his thoughts, for she reined closer, and her teeth were digging into her lower lip.  “Well, aren’t you going to do anything?” she demanded desperately.  “You’re here, and I’ve told you I—­care.  Are you going to leave me to bear Spikes’ abuse always?”

“You married him,” Weary remarked mildly and a bit defensively.  It seemed to him that loyalty to Irish impelled him.

She tossed her head contemptuously.  “It’s nice to throw that at me.  I might get back at you and say you loved me.  You did, you know.”

“And you married Spikes; what can I do about it?”

“What—­can—­you—­do—­about it?  Did you come back to ask me that?” There was a well defined, white line around her mouth, and her eyes were growing ominously bright.

Weary did not like the look of her, nor her tone.  He felt, somehow, glad that it was not Irish, but himself; Irish might have felt the thrall of old times—­whatever they were—­and have been tempted.  His eyes, also, grew ominous, but his voice was very smooth. (Irish, too, had that trait of being quietest when he was most roused.)

“I came back on business; I will confess I didn’t come to see you,” he said.  “I’m only a bone-headed cowpuncher, but even cowpunchers can play square.  They don’t, as a rule step in between a man and his wife.  You married Spikes, and according to your own tell, you did it to spite me.  So I say again, what can I do about it?”

She looked at him dazedly.

“Uh course,” he went on gently, “I won’t stand to see any man abuse his wife, or bandy her name or mine around the country.  If I should happen to meet up with Spikes, there’ll likely be some dust raised.  And if I was you, and Spikes abused me, I’d quit him cold.”

“Oh, I see,” she said sharply, with an exaggeration of scorn.  “You have got over it, then.  There’s someone else.  I might have known a man can’t be trusted to care for the same woman long.  You ran after me and acted the fool, and kept on till you made me believe you really meant all you said—­”

“And you married Spikes,” Weary reiterated—­ungenerously, perhaps; but it was the only card he felt sure of.  There was no gainsaying that fact, it seemed.  She had married Spikes in a fit of pique at Irish.  Still, it was not well to remind her of it too often.  In the next five minutes of tumultuous recrimination, Weary had cause to remember what Shakespeare has to say about a woman scorned, and he wondered, more than ever, if Irish had really cared.  The girl—­even