“Bless yourself for that,” was the quick reply. “When it comes to a pinch the filthy’s one of the things inconvenient to miss.”
He put the belt away in his own secret hiding-place and busied himself with getting up his friend’s horse. Gard meant to ride to Bonesta, and there board the train. If, as he suspected, Westcott had found that tell-tale packet, he must himself move quickly, and settle Mrs. Hallard’s matter before he could be apprehended as a fugitive from justice. Not that Gard meant to be apprehended. But he did not intend that any thought of risk to his personal safety should interfere with the discharge of his duty as he saw it.
“So long, Sandy,” he said, out beyond the corrals.
“Adios!”
Sandy gripped his hand heartily, and the two men parted; but Gard made a wide detour, ere he took the desert road, to glimpse from afar the low-walled casa, white in the glaring December sunlight.
He had left the Palo Verde well behind, and was in a little sandy valley, the dry bed of some ancient lake, when he dismounted to tighten his saddle cincha. Pausing an instant, before remounting, he cast a weary glance skyward and gave a cry of surprise.
High in the ether an enchanted landscape, huge, distorted, hung before his vision. Rocks and trees, vast cacti and shimmering plain were there, and moving among them were a horse and rider, followed by a dog.
There was no mistaking the figures. Helen, upon Dickens, was riding on the plain, Patsy keeping her company. The blessed mirage showed them plainly and Gard gazed, dizzy with emotion.
It was but a fleeting vision. Some movement of the upper air-currents disturbed it and even as he looked it broke into fragments, dissolved and was gone, ere Gard’s swelling heart had ceased its wild pounding.
“She is out there in the desert,” he murmured, a sobbing catch in his throat, “Oh, God bless her! I love her! I love her!”