He took off his hat to let the wind fan his forehead. It was like the springs he had known in the East.
He seemed to catch the odor of roses and honeysuckle—he remembered his first and only love. Their parting came back to him with vivid minuteness of detail. It had all been infinitely bitter to them, but he was going where a man had a chance, and he would return.
He had scarcely thought of it in years, and now there was only the scent of the flowers and her face rising out of the gray plain before him. She had done her part faithfully and then she had married, to live her days amid the hard commonplaceness of the little eastern village where she was born.
The Bad Man gathered up the reins, which had fallen from his hand to the horn of the saddle, and was about to apply the spur to his horse's flank, when, glancing back over his shoulder, he saw a wagon coming down the trail, the center of a moving cloud of dust. Influenced by a sudden impulse he could not explain, he permitted the reins to fall slack again.
As the wagon came nearer he saw that it was a homesteader's outfit drawn by a single horse that was dark with sweat and dust and flecked here and there with white splotches of foam. A man was driving, and at his back a woman's face was visible.
As the wagon drew up alongside of the Bad Man the homesteader reined in his horse. Las Vegas' questionable hero spoke first. He merely remarked that it was a fine day. The homesteader inspected him narrowly before answering the greeting, then he said—and his tone was one of surly reserve, while his manner was neither easy nor gracious—“It is a fine day.”
He was a round-shouldered man of thirty-five with a sallow unhealthy skin and a scanty ill-kept beard. He had put aside his coat and wore only a faded, much mended cotton shirt and overalls—once blue, but now showing white at the seams—tucked carelessly into the tops of heavy boots.
The woman peered out anxiously and fearfully at the stranger.
The latter said by way of continuing the conversation:
“Sunken River Valley. Got a brother there,” was the gruff response.
The Bad Man looked him over carefully and critically, then the wagon, and last of all the horse. He noted that the wagon showed the effects of the roads and a long journey. The jingle it sent forth whenever the horse moved spoke eloquently for repairs. The horse, however, though it had been driven hard, was comparatively fresh and able. The gentleman from Las Vegas lived in a community where men were largely judged by their horses, and he decided that the animal before him was a recent purchase.