"I don't suppose a woman knows, herself, what she means, half the time," he hazarded impatiently.

"She certainly didn't have any excuse for throwing it into me the way she did; maybe she's sorry for it now." After that his anger cooled imperceptibly, and he hurried a little faster because the day was waning with the chill haste of mid-autumn, and he recalled what she had said at first about being afraid of coyotes.

And, although the storm of three days ago had been swept into mere memory by that sudden chinook wind, and the days were once more invitingly warm and hazily tranquil, night came shiveringly upon the land and the unhoused thought longingly of hot suppers and the glow of a fire.
The girl's horse was, he believed, just disappearing into a deep depression half a mile farther on; but when he reached the place where he had seen it, there was nothing in sight save a few head of cattle and a coyote trotting leisurely up the farther slope.

He went farther down the shallow coulee, then up to the high level beyond, his rope coiled loosely over one arm with the end dragging a foot behind him.

But there was nothing to be seen from up there, except that the sun was just a red disk upon the far-off hills, and that the night was going to be uncomfortably cool if that wind kept blowing from the northwest.
He began to feel slightly uneasy about the girl, and to regret wasting any time over her horse, and to fear that he might not be able to get close enough to rope the beast, even if he did see him.
He turned back then and walked swiftly through the dusk toward the ridge, beyond which she and Rambler were waiting.