"Farewell, Pappy," he echoed.
"All right, son," came back the faint hail, then after a moment's silence Kimbro's voice added, "Thank you for sending this word by me. Farewell," and there was the sound of his footsteps moving on down the little valley.
Probably six hours later, Lance wakened and lay looking at the embers; he reached out a languid hand to push a brand in place. Presently he rose and built up the smoldering fire, and thereafter sat beside it, head on hand, his hollow eyes studying the coals. His father was gone back to notify the sheriff. Well, that was right—a man must answer for the thing he did; and they said that Flenton Hands was dead. He was not consciously glad of this—nor regretful; he was only very weary, spent and at the end of everything. How could he have done otherwise than he had done? And yet—and yet—
His mind went back the long way to his wooing of Callista. What 380 a flowery path it was to lead to such a bleak conclusion! Then once more his thought veered, like the light shifting smoke above the fire, to Hands. They'd hardly hang him for the killing. It was not a murder. There were those who would testify as to what his provocation had been. But it would mean his days shut away from the sun; a disgraced name to hand down to his boy.
For no reason which he could have given, the sound of a banjo whispered in his memory, "How many miles, how many years?" Ah, the miles and the years then! Callista would be free—and that would be right, too. He had no call to cling to her and claim her. She had never been his, never—never—never! An inconsequent vision of her face lying on his breast the night he had climbed the wild grapevine to her window came mockingly back to tantalize him. He stirred uneasily, and reached to lay another chunk in place, mutely answering the recollection back again—she had never been his.
Then suddenly his head lifted with a start; there was the noise of a rolling stone outside, a thrashing of the bushes, a rush of hurrying feet, and even before he could spring up Callista was in the cave.
But not any Callista Lance had ever known; not the scornful beauty who throned herself among her mates and accepted the homage of mankind as her due; not the flushed, tremulous 381 Callista of that never-to-be-forgotten night at the window. This was not the young wife of the earlier married days—least of all the mother of his son, or the kindly friend, the stanch partner, who had tended on and served him here in the cave. This was a strange, fierce, half-distraught, shining-eyed Callista, a fit adventurer, if she list, to put forth toward his island. A little dark shawl was tied over her bright head; but from under its confining edges the fair locks, usually so ordered and placid, streamed loosely around the face which looked out white and fearful. Her dress was soaked about the edges and all up one side. It was stained with earth, there, too, ripped loose from the waist, and torn till it hung in long, streaming shreads. A deep scratch across her cheek bled unheeded, and a flying strand of hair had glued fast in it. Her shaking hands were bleeding too, and grimed with woods mold, her finger nails were packed with it, where she had fallen again and again and scrambled up. She walked staggeringly and breathed in gasps.
"They—" she panted, then took two or three laboring breaths before she could go on. "They told me at Father Cleaverage's that they was goin' to send here and fetch you in—is that so?"
"I reckon they are," the man beside the fire assented nervelessly.
A wild look lightened over her face. She came stumblingly up to him.