LITTLE DOG had not yet come back to the Reservation, although shortly after he had shot Tom he had left the show. And little by little Tom's thoughts of revenge died before the situation in which he found himself. Once he came back with the news that he could get work at the new filling station near the railroad, but he found Kay opposed to it and oddly anxious to get out of town.
"You're a good cow-man, Tom. All these men say that. Then why?"
"You can't run cattle unless you've got cattle to run, girl. I've tried every outfit in the country."
He went on doggedly, borrowed cars and made his long trips into the back country, over roads now deep in dust; coming back at night or the next day, disheartened and weary from a region drying up and desolate, and from ranchers as discouraged as himself. The streams were low and getting lower, the pastures were baked as hard as brick, and the grass—the life of the cow-country—had ceased to grow and lay brown and burnt in the fields.
He was bitter, sometimes. Bill, coming to call on them and relaxing after a time, told some railroad stories of old Lucius Dowling and the billion-dollar crowd he had brought with him one summer.
"Sure was a great old man, your grandfather," he said to Kay. "Why, say, it wasn't anything for those fellows to bet a thousand dollars on the turn of a card."
Tom had been lounging on the bed, a habit which set Kay's nerves on edge. Now he sat up suddenly.
"Huh!" he said. "And where'd they get it? How'd they get it? Where'd they get money to throw around like that?"
"Don't ask me!" said Bill, good-humoredly.
"Well, I'm telling you. You're a cow-man, Bill. What
