CHAPTER 19. A VILLON OF THE DESERT
When Alice Mackenzie looked back in after years upon the
incidents connected with that ride to the Rocking Chair, it was
always with a kind of glorified pride in her villain-hero. He had
his moments, had this twentieth-century Villon, when he
represented not unworthily the divinity in man; and this day held
more than one of them. Since he was what he was, it also held as
many of his black moods.
The start was delayed, owing to a cause Leroy had not foreseen.
When York went, sleepy-eyed, to the corral to saddle the ponies,
he found the bars into the pasture let clown, and the whole
remunda kicking up its heels in a paddock large as a goodsized
city. The result was that it took two hours to run up the bunch
of ponies and another half-hour to cut out, rope, and saddle the
three that were wanted. Throughout the process Reilly sat on the
fence and scowled.
Leroy, making an end of slapping on and cinching the last saddle,
wheeled suddenly on the Irishman. "What's the matter, Reilly?"
"Was I saying anything was the matter?"
"You've been looking it right hard.
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