"Ye needn't bully the Pinto colt, Jeff; he is doin' his level best. And
she snaked that ar ten dollars outer Dodd?"

"Yes; and sent it back to ME. To ME, Bill! At such a time as this! As if
I was dead broke!--a mere tramp. As if--"

"In course! in course!" said Bill soothingly, yet turning his head aside
to bestow a deceitful smile upon the trees that whirled beside them.
"And ye told her ye didn't want her money?"

"Yes, Bill--but it--it--it was AFTER she had done this!"

"Surely! I'll take the lines now, Jeff."

He took them. Jeff relapsed into gloomy silence. The starlight of that
dewless Sierran night was bright and cold and passionless. There was no
moon to lead the fancy astray with its faint mysteries and suggestions;
nothing but a clear, grayish-blue twilight, with sharply silhouetted
shadows, pointed here and there with bright large-spaced constant stars.
The deep breath of the pine-woods, the faint, cool resinous spices of
bay and laurel, at last brought surcease to his wounded spirit. The
blessed weariness of exhausted youth stole tenderly on him. His head
nodded, dropped. Yuba Bill, with a grim smile, drew him to his side,
enveloped him in his blanket, and felt his head at last sink upon his
own broad shoulder.

A few minutes later the coach drew up at the "Summit House." Yuba Bill
did not dismount, an unusual and disturbing circumstance that brought
the bar-keeper to the veranda.