Besides, there was trouble across the border, and fierce fighting now and then. There had been some thievish raids made by Mexicans upon ranches along the river not many miles away, and that reminded her how Knight had remarked some weeks ago that she had better not go alone as far as the river bank.
"It isn't likely that anything would happen by day," he said, "but you might be shot at from the other side." Annesley was not afraid, and there was a faint stirring of pleasure in the thought that she was doing something against his wish on this anniversary. Deliberately, she sat alone by the river, waiting for the pageant of sunset to pass; and when she reached home the moon was up, a great white moon that turned the waving waste of pale, sparse grasses to a silver sea.
She had taken sandwiches and fruit with her, telling the cook that she would want no dinner when she came back. Away in the cow-punchers' quarters there was music, and she flung herself into a hammock on the veranda, to rest and listen.
There was a soft yet cool wind from the south, bringing the fragrance of creosote blossoms, and it seemed to the girl that never had she seen such white floods of moonlight, not even that night a year ago at Valley House.
Even the sky was milk-white. There were no black shadows anywhere, only dove-gray ones, except under the veranda roof. Her hammock was screened from the light by one dark shadow, like a straight-hung curtain. Save for the music of a fiddle and men's voices, the silver-white world lay silent in enchanted sleep.
Then suddenly something moved. A tall, dark figure was coming to the veranda. It paused at the cactus fence.
Could it be Knight, home already and on foot? No, it was a woman.
She walked straight and fast and unhesitating to the veranda, where she sat down on the steps.
Annesley raised herself on her elbow, and peered out of the concealing shadow. Who could the woman be? It was on the tip of her tongue to call, "Who are you?" when a sudden lifting of the bent face under a drooping hat brought it beneath the searchlight of the moon.
The woman was the Countess de Santiago, and the moon's radiance so lit her dark eyes that she seemed to look straight at Annesley in her hammock. The girl's heart gave a leap of some emotion like fear, yet not fear. She did not stop to analyze it, but she knew that she wished to escape from the woman; and an instant's reflection told her that she could not be seen if she kept still.