“Oh! I was in hopes—”
“So was I, so we're even there. We'll have to pool our chances, I guess. Any gate down that way—or haven't you followed the fence?”
“I followed it for miles and miles—it seemed. It must be some big field of the Cross L; but they have so very many big fields!”
“And you couldn't give a rough guess at how far it is to the Cross L?”—insinuatingly.
He could vaguely see her shake of head. “Ordinarily it should be about six miles beyond Rodway's, where I board. But I haven't the haziest idea of where Rodway's place is, you see; so that won't help you much. I'm all at sea in this snow.” Her voice was rueful.
“Well, if you came up the fence, there's no use going back that way; and there's sure nothing made by going away from it.—that's the way I came. Why not go on the way you're headed?”
“We might as well, I suppose,” she assented; and Rowdy turned and rode by her side, grateful for the plurality of the pronoun which tacitly included him in her wanderings, and meditating many things. For one, he wondered if she were as nice a girl as her voice sounded. He could not see much of her face, because it was muffled in a white silk scarf. Only her eyes showed, and they were dark and bright.
When he awoke to the fact that the wind, grown colder, beat upon her cruelly, he dropped behind a pace and took the windy side, that he might shield her with his body. But if she observed the action she gave no sign; her face was turned from him and the wind, and she rode without speaking. After long plodding, the line of posts turned unexpectedly a right angle, and Vaughan took a long, relieved breath.
“We'll have the wind on our backs now,” he remarked. “I guess we may as well keep on and see where this fence goes to.”
His tone was too elaborately cheerful to be very cheering. He was wondering if the girl was dressed warmly. It had been so warm and sunny before the blizzard struck, but now the wind searched out the thin places in one's clothing and ran lead in one's bones, where should be simply marrow. He fancied that her voice, when she spoke, gave evidence of actual suffering—and the heart of Rowdy Vaughan was ever soft toward a woman.