"Have it your own way,
then, darn you! I don't want to go on rodeo, nohow."
"I know that, all right," snapped Dade, and started off with his hat
tilted over his eyes. No one, he reminded himself, would want to spend a
month or so riding the range when he could stay and philander with as
pretty a Spanish girl as ever played the game of cat-and-mouse with a
man. And Jack never had been the kind to go looking for trouble; truth
to tell, he had never found it necessary, for trouble usually flew to
meet him as a needle flies to the magnet.
But, a wound is not necessarily a deadly one because it sends
excruciating pain-signals to a man's heart and brain; and love seldom is
fatal, however painful it may be. Dade was slowly recovering, under the
rather heroic treatment of watching his successor writhe and exult by
turns, as the mood of the maiden might decree. Strong medicine, that, to
be swallowed with a wry face, if you will; but it is guaranteed to cure
if the sufferer is not a mental and moral weakling.
Dade was quite ready to go out to rodeo work; indeed, he was anxious to
go. But, not being a morbid young man, he did not contemplate carrying a
broken heart with him. Teresita was sweet and winsome and maddeningly
alluring; he knew it, he felt it still. Indeed, he was made to realize
it every time the whim seized her to punish Jack by smiling upon Dade.
But she was as capricious as beauty usually is, and he knew that also;
and after being used several times as a club with which to beat Jack
into proper humility (and always seeing very clearly that he was merely
the club and nothing more) he had almost reached the point where he
could shrug shoulders philosophically at her coquetry; and what is
better, do it without bitterness.
Pages:
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153