“No,” said Huldah getting to her feet and looking strangely at him. “The rain’s about done now; the moon’ll be comin’ up in half a hour—I’m a-goin’ on down to Hepzibah, like I said I was. Ef Wade Turrentine wants me, he knows whar to come for me. Ef he thinks of me as he said he did the last time we had speech together—w’y, I never want to put eyes on his face again. Oh—Creed, I wish’t you’d come with me!”
“But it was me you quarrelled about,” remonstrated Bonbright with that sudden clear vision which ultra-spiritual natures often show, and that startling forthrightness of speech which amazes and daunts the mountaineer. “I’m the last man you ought to leave the mountain with, Huldah, if you want to make up with Wade.”
“How—how did you know?” whispered the girl, staring at him. “Well, anyhow, I ain’t never a-goin’ back thar.”
She could not be prevailed on to go to bed with Aunt Nancy, when Doss Provine and the children were asleep, and Creed had gone to his quarters in the little office building, but sat by the fire all night staring into the embers, occasionally stirring them or putting on a stick of wood. At the earliest grey of dawn she waked Nancy, bidding the elder woman fasten the door after her. Declining in strangely subdued fashion her hostess’s offer of hot coffee, she stepped noiselessly out and, with a swift look about, dived into the steep short-cut trail which led almost straight down the face of Big Turkey Track, from turn to turn of the main road.
A cloud clung to the Side; the foliage of only the foremost trees emerged from its blur, and these were dimmed and flatted as though a soft white veil were tangled among their leaves. Into this white mystery of dawn the girl had vanished.
Nancy looked curiously after her a moment, then glanced swiftly about as Huldah had done, her eyes dwelling long on Creed’s little shack, standing peaceful in the morning mists. Softly she turned back, and closed and barred the door.