“Maybe,” Lance assented non-committally and rode away.
There were no horse tracks in the trail, yet Lance followed it doggedly, the new-risen sun burning his back through two thin shirts. He seemed in no doubt this morning as to the course he should take. He scarcely gave a glance at the trail. His eyes were staring straight before him at a sullen row of blue-black “thunder heads” that showed above the gray skyline. Yet he did not see them, did not give a thought to their meaning.
He was thinking poignantly of Mary Hope, fighting the vivid impression which a dream last night had left with him. In his dream Mary Hope had stood at her door, with her hands held out to him beseechingly, and called and called: “Lance! Oh, Lance! I dinna hate you because you’re a Lorrigan––Oh, Lance!”
It had been a curious dream from start to finish. Curious because, in various forms, this was the third time he had seen her stand with hands outstretched, calling to him. He did not believe in dreams. He had neither patience for presentiments nor faith in anything that bordered on the occult.
It had been against much inner protest that he had ridden to the schoolhouse in obedience to the 301 persistent idea that she needed him. That he had not found her there seemed to him conclusive proof that there was nothing in telepathy. The dreams, he felt sure, were merely a continuation of that persistent idea––and the persistent idea, he was beginning to believe, was but a perverse twist given to his own longing for her.
“––And I can’t go to her––not yet. Not while the Lorrigan name––” What came before, what came after those incomplete phrases he would not permit his mind to formulate in words. But he could not shake off the effect of the dream, could not stifle altogether the impulse that plucked at his resolve.
For more than an hour he rode and tried to fix his mind upon the thing he had set out to do. He knew perfectly well where he was going––and it was not to see Mary Hope. Neither was his destination Lava Creek nor the drying range on either side. His first two days of hard riding had been not altogether fruitless, and he had enough to think of without thinking of Mary Hope. Certain cold facts stared at him, and gibbered their sinister meaning, and dared him to ride on and discover other facts, blood-brothers of these that haunted him o’ nights.
Coaley, feeling his rider’s mood, sensing also the portent of the heavy, heat-saturated atmosphere and the rolling thunder heads, slowed his springy trot to a walk and tossed his head uneasily 302 from side to side. Then, quite without warning, Lance wheeled the horse short around and touched the reeking flanks with his heels.
“I’m seventeen kinds of a damn fool––but I can’t stand any more of this!” he muttered savagely, and rode at a sharp trot with his back to the slow-gathering storm.
He found Mary Hope half a mile from the Douglas house, at the edge of the meadow round which Hugh was driving a mower, the steady, metallic clicking of the shuttle-like sickle sounding distinct from the farther side of the motionless green expanse. Mary Hope was standing leaning against one lone little poplar tree, her hat in her hand, and her eyes staring dully into the world of sorrowful thoughts. Relief and a great, hungry tenderness flooded the soul of Lance when he saw her. He pulled up and swung off beside her.