[Illustration: Down the main street of Yavapai]
A hundred yards from the Manzanita House was a corral and in it a score of young horses were being held to await shipment. In the course of his ambling, Bruce came to this bunch of animals and leaned against the bars, poking a hand through and snapping his thumb encouragingly as the ponies crowded against the far side and eyed him with suspicion. He talked to them a time, then climbed the fence and perched on the top pole, snapping his fingers and making coaxing sounds in futile effort to tempt the horses to come to him; and all the time his mind was back at the Circle A, wondering what had transpired under his roof, in his room, that day.
Nora's voice startled him when it sounded so close behind, for he had not heard her approach.
"Why, you scart me bad!" he said, with a laugh, letting himself down beside her. "What you doin' out to-night?"
He pinched her cheek with his old familiarity, but under the duress of his own thinking did not notice that she failed to respond in any way to his pretended mood.
"I thought I'd like to walk a little an' get th' air," she said. "An' ... tell you that I'm goin' away."
He lifted his hat and scratched his ear and moved beside her as she started walking along the road, now a dim tape under the mountain stars.
"Why, Nora, I thought you was a fixture here; what'll we do without you?"
He did not know how that hurt her, how the thought that he _could_ do without her hung about her heart like a sodden weight. She covered it well, holding her voice steady, restraining the discouragement that wanted to break into words, and the night kept secret with her the pallor of her face.
"I guess you'll get along, Bruce; you done it before I come an' I guess th' town'll keep on prosperin' after I leave. I ... I got a chance to go into business."
"A lunch counter that I can get for two hundred; I've saved more 'n that since ... since I come here. That'll be better than workin' for somebody else an' I figure I'll make as much and maybe considerable more."
"That's fine!" he repeated. "Fine, Nora!"
In spite of the complexity of his thinking he found an interval of respite and was truly glad for her.
"I ... I wanted to tell you before anybody else knew, 'cause I ... Well, you made it possible. If you hadn't done this for me ... this here in Yavapai ... I'd never been ..."