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It positively baked me, that terrible sun, and the more it hurt me the more I delighted in it, or in myself rather, in that I was thus the master of my flesh and superior to its claims and remonstrances. When I found under me a particularly sharp, but not too sharp, rock-projection, I ground my body upon the point of it, rowelled my flesh in a very ecstasy of mastery and of purification.
"Can't remember anything overnight. Can't count on a doggone reaction. Can't pay for my own pants! I won't be able to marry for ten years. If Elizabeth is wise, she will throw me over. She'll be tired of waiting for me, before I can earn enough to buy my instruments let alone the shoe-strings Mr. Ferguson talked about!" Then her letter came. It was a spur on rowelled flesh.
"I don't believe it," said Margaret quite as if that settled the question. But now his hobby, rowelled by opposition, was spurred to loftier flights. "Ah, the power of these great fortunes America has bred is monstrous," he suddenly cried. "And always they work for evil. If I were ever to write a melodrama, Margaret, I could wish for no more thorough-paced villain than a large fortune."
He was not happy. He was merely passive. It did not matter to anyone where he went. It did not matter much to himself. He was as well here as elsewhere until some substantial reason or some inner spur rowelled him into action. Here there was no one to look askance at his disfigurement.
The Texan rode with one hand gripping the hackamore rope and the other his quirt which stung and bit into the frenzied animal's shoulders each time he hit the ground. In a perfect storm of fury the horse plunged, twisted, sunfished, and bucked to free himself of the rider who swayed easily in the saddle and raked him flank and sides with his huge rowelled spurs. "Stay a long time!"
First a reckless pour of riders urging wearied horses, their sides white-flecked above with blown foam, and dark beneath with rowelled blood. Many of the horsemen carried marks upon them which showed that all had not been plunder and pleasuring upon their foray. For there were white napkins, and napkins that had once been white, tied across many brows.
The question, asked with some appearance of interest, came from a slender, dark-haired man in a blue shirt and leather "chaps," his face overshadowed by a big sombrero, who up to this time had not spoken. He had been leaning against the front wall of the National, thoughtfully removing some more of its paint by scraping it with the big rowelled Mexican spurs which he affected.
The air was nauseous with the dank mucky odour that cooked out of the mangrove swamp. Rowelled by the squeaky music to recollection of old-world ports and places, Borckman lay on his face on the hot planking, beat a tattoo with his naked toes, and gutturally muttered an unending monologue of curses.
Pard was grunting now, but Douglas rowelled him and pushed on until he saw the antelope kneeling in the lee of an outcropping of rock. It struggled to its feet and fell again, its beautiful head dropping against its crimsoned breast. "Wonder if I can get you home alive to Judith?" said Douglas.
For an instant, the girl hesitated as her eyes swept from the cowpuncher's face to the brilliant scarf loosely knotted about his throat, the blue flannel shirt, the bright yellow angora chaps against which the ivory butt of a revolver showed a splotch of white, and the boots jammed into the broad wooden stirrups, to their high heels from which protruded a pair of enormously rowelled spurs inlaid with silver.
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