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A quick and significant glance shot from Boca's eyes to her mother's. Old Flores ate stolidly. If he had heard he showed no evidence of it. "'Bull' Malvey! A darn good name for him," thought Pete. And he felt a strange sense of shame at being in his company. He wondered if Flores were afraid of Malvey or simply indifferent to his raw talk.
Although his eyes were closed and Boca's hot hand was pressed down on them, Pete knew that round-about was a light and warmth of noonday . . . Boca's hand drew back and Pete lay staring straight into the morning sun which shone through the open doorway. In the distance he could see Brevoort riding slowly toward him. Pete raised on his elbow and threw back the blankets.
"Pig!" she flamed. She turned furiously on her father, whose vacuous grin faded as she cursed him shrilly for a coward. Listless and heavy-eyed came Boca's mother. Without the slightest trace of emotion she examined Pete's wound, fetched water and washed it, binding it up with a handkerchief. Quite as listlessly she spoke to her husband, telling him to leave the wine and go to bed.
"I'm sure thinkin' of you every minute. It ain't Malvey that's botherin' me now." "Then why do you not rest and wait?" "Because restin' and waitin' is worse than takin" a chanct. I got to go." "You must go?" Pete nodded. "But what if I will not find a horse for you?" "Then I reckon you been foolin' me right along." "That is not so!" Boca's hand dropped to her side and she turned from him.
Breathing hard, Pete stepped forward and lifted a corner of the serape. Boca's pretty mouth smiled up at him but her eyes were as dead pools in the night. The full significance of that white face and those dull, unseeing eyes, swept through him like a flame. "Pardner!" he whispered, and flung himself on his knees beside her, his shadow falling across her head and shoulders.
"You got too many friends out there," and he gestured toward the patio with his gun. "Not my friends," said Pete. Boca's song ended abruptly as she turned from her audience to glance in Pete's direction. She saw him standing with upraised hands and in front of him three men strangers to Showdown. Came the shuffling of feet as the men in the patio turned to see what she was staring at.
Leave the rest to me." Pete nodded and lifted his glass. From the patio came the sound of Boca's voice and the soft strumming of the guitar. Pete heard but hardly realized the significance of the first line or two of the song and then: "A rider stood at the lamplit bar, tugging the knot of his neckscarf loose, While some one sang to the silver strings, in the moonlight patio."
"But say, Boca, what made me sore was the way them hombres out there got fresh, joshin' you and askin' you to sing, jest like they had a rope on you " "You think of that Malvey?" "Well, I ain't forgittin' the way he " Boca's eyes flashed. "Yes! But here it is different. The Spider, he is my friend. It is that when I have rested and eaten he will ask me to sing. Manuelo will play the guitar.
You will grow weary of life from much suffering, even as I. Then it is that you will think of these days and many days to come and these days shall be as wine in your old age " Boca's mother paused as though listening. "But like wine " and again she paused. "Headache?" queried Pete. "Well, I know how that feels, without the wine. That fortune sounds good to me all except that about Boca.
To him she was an altogether wonderful person, so quietly cheerful, natural, and unobtrusively competent . . . Then, through some queer trick of memory, Boca's face was visioned to him and his thoughts were of the desert, of men and horses and a far sky-line. "I got to get out of here," he told himself sleepily. And he wondered if he would ever see Doris Gray again after he left the hospital. Dr.
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