church. Then he reached for the bottle, poured another drink, and
drank it very slowly. Through the open door came the far-away rattle
of wheels. He tossed some money onto the bar, walked to the door, and
stood gazing down the trail toward the cloud of grey dust that grew
dimmer and dimmer in the distance. At last, it disappeared altogether,
and only the trail remained, winding like a great grey serpent toward
the distant black buttes of the Judith Range. He started to re-enter
the saloon, paused with his foot on the threshold and stared down the
empty trail, then facing abruptly about he swung into the saddle,
turned his horse's head northward, and rode slowly out of town. At the
little creek he paused and stared into the piney woods. A tiny white
flower lay, where it had been dropped in the trail, at the feet of his
horse, and he swung low and recovered it. For a long time he sat
holding the little blossom in his hand. Gently he drew it across his
cheek. He remembered--and the memory hurt--that the last time he had
reached from the saddle had been to snatch _her_ handkerchief from the
ground, and he had been just the fraction of a second too late.

"My luck's runnin' mighty low," he muttered softly, and threw back his
shoulders, as his teeth gritted hard, "but I'm still in the game, an'
maybe this will change it." Very carefully, very tenderly, he placed
the blossom beneath the band inside his hat. "I must go an' hunt for
Bat, the old renegade! If anything's happened to him--if that damned
Long Bill has laid for him--I will kill a man, sure enough." He
gathered up his reins and rode on up the trail, and as he rode the
shadows lengthened. Only once he paused and looked backward at the
little ugly white town. Before him the trail dipped into a wide valley
and he rode on. And, as the feet of his horse thudded softly in the
grey dust of the trail, the sound blended with the low, wailing chant
of the mournful dirge of the plains:

"O bury me not on the lone prairie
Where the wild coyotes will howl o'er me,
Where the rattlesnakes hiss and the crow flies free,
O bury me not on the lone prairie."

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TEXAN***

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