Space meeting space—plains and sky welded into harmonies of blue and gray. Cloud shadows racing across billowy uplands, and sagebrush nodding in a breeze crisp and electric as only a breeze from our upper Western plateau can be. Distant mountains, with their allurements enhanced by the filmiest of purple veils. Bird song and the chattering of prairie dogs from the foreground merely intensifying the great, echoless silence of the plains.
Lowell and Helen from a ridge—their ridge it was now!—watched the changes of the panorama. They had dismounted, and their horses were standing near at hand, reins trailing, and manes rising and falling with the undulations of the breeze. It was a month after Sargent's confession and his surrender as the slayer of the recluse of the Greek Letter Ranch. As Lowell had prophesied, Sargent's acquittal had been prompt. His story was corroborated by brief testimony from Lowell and Helen. Citizens crowded about him, after the jury had brought in its verdict of "Not guilty," and one of the first to congratulate him was Jim McFann, who had been acquitted when he came up for trial for slaying Talpers. The half-breed told Sargent of Talpers's plan to kill Helen.
"I'm just telling you," said the half-breed, "to ease your mind in case you're feeling any responsibility for Talpers's death."
Soon after his acquittal Sargent departed for California, where he married Miss Scovill—the outcome of an early romance. Helen was soon to leave to join her foster parents, and she and Lowell had come for a last ride.
"I cannot realize the glorious truth of it all—that I am to come soon and claim you and bring you back here as my wife," said Lowell. "Say it all over again for me."
He was standing with both arms about her and with her face uptilted to his. No doubt other men and women had stood thus on this glacier-wrought promontory—lovers from cave and tepee.
"It is all true," Helen answered, "but I must admit that the responsibilities of being an Indian agent's wife seem alarming. The thought of there being so much to do among these people makes me afraid that I shall not be able to meet the responsibilities."
"You'll be bothered every day with Indians—men, women, and babies. You'll hear the thumping of their moccasined feet every hour of the day. They'll overrun your front porch and seek you out in the sacred precincts of your kitchen, mostly about things that are totally inconsequential."
"But think of the work in its larger aspects—the good that there is to be done."