He opened his lips to say more, took a long breath
instead, closed them, and looked at Jack queerly. For one reckless
moment he meditated a plunge into that perfect candor which may be
either the wisest or the most foolish thing a man may do in all his
life.
"I didn't think you noticed it," he said, his voice lowered
instinctively because of the temptation to tell the truth, and his
glance wandering absently over to the corral opposite, where Surry stood
waiting placidly until his master should have need of him. "There has
been a regular brick wall between us lately. I felt it myself and I
blamed you for it. I--"
"It wasn't my building," Jack cut in eagerly. "It's you, you old pirate.
Why, you'd hardly talk when we happened to be alone, and when I tried to
act as if nothing was wrong, you'd look so darned sour I just had to
close my sweet lips like the petals of a--"
"Cabbage," supplied Dade dryly, and placed his cigarette between lips
that twitched.
Former relations having thus been established after their own fashion,
Dade began to wonder how he had ever been fool enough to think of
confessing his hurt. It would have built that wall higher and thicker;
he saw it now, and with the lighting of his cigarette he swung back to a
more normal state of mind than he had been in for a month.
"I'm going up toward Manuel's camp, pretty soon," he observed lazily,
eying Jack meditatively through a thin haze of smoke.
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