SHADOWS ON THE SAGE-SLOPE
Then help yourself to whatever else you need—burros, packs, grain, dried fruits, and meat. You must take coffee and sugar and flour—all kinds of supplies. Don't forget corn and seeds. I remember how you used to starve. Please—please take all you can pack away from here. I'll make a bundle for you, which you mustn't open till you're in your valley. How I'd like to see it! To judge by you and Wrangle how wild it must be!"
Jane walked down into the outer court and approached the sorrel. Upstarting, he laid back his ears and eyed her.
"Wrangle—dear old Wrangle," she said, and put a caressing hand on his matted mane. "Oh, he's wild, but he knows me! Bern, can he run as fast as ever?"
"Run? Jane, he's done sixty miles since last night at dark, and I could make him kill Black Star right now in a ten-mile race."
"He never could," protested Jane. "He couldn't even if he was fresh."
"I reckon mebbe the best hoss 'll prove himself yet," said Lassiter, "an', Jane, if it ever comes to that race I'd like you to be on Wrangle."
"I'd like that, too," rejoined Venters. "But, Jane, maybe Lassiter's hint is extreme. Bad as your prospects are you'll surely never come to the running point."
"Who knows!" she replied, with mournful smile.
"No, no, Jane, it can't be so bad as all that. Soon as I see Tull there 'll be a change in your fortunes. I'll hurry down to the village . . . . Now don't worry."
Jane retired to the seclusion of her room. Lassiter's subtle forecasting of disaster, Venters's forced optimism, neither remained in mind. Material loss weighed nothing in the balance with other losses she was sustaining. She wondered dully at her sitting there, hands folded listlessly, with a kind of numb deadness to the passing of time and the passing of her riches. She thought of
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