Wherefore he had no need to either train or watch his men. Mark Steele had left few loose ends behind him. There was only the regular routine of getting ready. Robin had time to burn. Some of it May helped him to consume. Somehow they did not need to talk much to achieve understanding. Robin was no fool. He knew he had his spurs to win. He did not know how Adam Sutherland would take him as a prospective son-in-law. When he voiced that doubt to May she only smiled.
“Do you remember saying to me that I’d probably marry a French count or an English lord and live in a castle and wear silk dresses all the time?” she teased. “Do you suppose dad has that sort of ambition for me?”
“Would it make any difference to you—far as I’m concerned—if he had?”
He had his arm around her at that moment. May looked up into his earnest face.
“Nobody ever quite knows what’s in my father’s mind,” she answered slowly. “He never gives himself away. He keeps his own counsel and acts. But I know what’s in my mind—and in my heart. He’s been good to me in so many different ways. But when it comes to this—there’s no use borrowing trouble, Robin. Wait and see. I’m yours. You’re mine. Nobody can get around that.”
“Is it real?” he asked. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s just a fancy of yours—or if I’m dreaming.”
She stopped his mouth with a kiss by way of answer.
“I’ll penalize you if you say things like that,” she threatened. “If it’s a dream I never want to wake up.”
Robin, sometimes when he was alone, would look away south over the foothills, to the dark line that marked the course of Birch Creek in which nestled the Bar M Bar, recalling a dream out of which he had wakened with a bitter taste in his mouth. But this—this was different.
He would try to peer into the future. When he did it seemed unreckonable. There was still a tangle to unravel, enemies to cope with. Life hadn’t become less complicated because he was off with an old love and on with a new.