She had put one arm protectingly about Alice Snell. That disturbed young woman, her tawny hair in a tangle, her cheeks tear stained, stared at Rock. Her eyes expressed complete incredulity, surprise and a strange blend of grief and wonder.
Charlie nodded. “Glad, too,” he said. “Hope you don’t send me with that outfit this fall.”
“Some one will have to go,” Nona said dispiritedly.
“Oh, well!” Charlie shrugged his shoulders and took his horse away to the stable. Nona led Alice inside. Rock stood his rifle against the wall and sat down on the porch steps to roll a smoke. He found the fingers that sifted tobacco into the paper somewhat tremulous. Odd that a man could face a situation like that with cold determination and find himself shaky when it was all over. Rock smiled and blew smoke into the still air. He could see the teams plodding in the hayfield. The whir of the mower blades mingled with the watery murmur of the river. A foraging bee hummed in a bluster of flowers by his feet. Except for these small sounds, the hush of the plains lay like a blanket, a void in which men and the passions of men were inconsequential, little worrying organisms agitated briefly over small matters, like flies on the Great Wall of China.
He sat there a long time. Charlie came back and went into the bunk room. Rock saw him stretch out on a bed. Good kid—loyal to his friends and his outfit. What a mess there would have been if a fight had started. Like the Alamo. Two of them intrenched behind log walls, and thirty angry men in the open, spitting lead. Alice Snell must certainly have thought a lot of Doc Martin. Rock could see the look on Buck Walters’ face when she flung her scornful epithets in his face. Funny about Doc and Nona Parke and Elmer Duffy. Not so funny, either. Hearts were caught on the rebound. Alice Snell was worth a second look. Passionate, willful, beautiful. Her fingers had clutched his arms with a frenzy of possession, when she pleaded with him to get away from danger. She was certainly capable of loving.
Nona came out. She, too, sat down on the edge of the porch near him. She stared at the haymakers, off down the river, where that hanging squad had departed, up at the banks where the plains pitched sharp to the valley floor.
“Isn’t it peaceful?” she said absently.
“Yes, by comparison. Sweet Alice calm her troubled soul?”
“How can you joke about it? I made her lie down. She’s in a terrible state—all on edge. I didn’t think she was like that.”
“Like what?” Rock inquired.