At breakfast he looked closely at her several times, searching for evidence of her grief of yesterday. There was none. Therefore he was not surprised when, after breakfast, she told him that she intended riding with him as far as the cabin for the purpose of bringing the remainder of her effects. He gravely reminded her that she had broken her promise of yesterday, and that as a punishment he contemplated refusing her request. But when, an hour later, he urged his pony down the river trail she was riding beside him.
But she did not ride again that week. She did not tell Hollis the reason; that returning that evening she had reached the Razor-Back and was riding along its crest when she happened to glance across the Rabbit-Ear toward the Circle Cross. On the opposite side of the river she had seen two men, sitting quietly in their saddles, watching her. They were Dunlavey and Yuma. She did not know what their presence there meant, but the sight was disquieting and she feared to return to the cabin for the few things that were still here.
But as the days went her fears were dispersed. Time and the lure of her old home had revived her courage, and on a day about a week following her previous trip, she herself saddled and bridled her pony and set out over the Coyote trail toward her cabin.
She had not told Hollis of her intention to ride there, fearing that the knowledge of what she had seen on the day of the other ride would be revealed in her eyes. It was a good hour after noon when she stole out of the house to her pony, mounted, and rode away toward the river.
For many days she had been wondering at Dunlavey’s continued inaction. He had been known as an energetic enemy, and though at their last meeting in Dry Bottom he had threatened her and her brother, he had so far made no hostile move. Uusually he would go a considerable distance out of his way to speak to her. Perhaps, she thought, at their last meeting she had shown him that he was wasting his time. Yet she could not forget that day when she had seen Yuma and Dunlavey on the Circle Cross side of the Rabbit-Ear. The sight somehow had been significant and forbidding.
But when she reached her cabin she had forgotten Dunlavey and Yuma; her thoughts dwelt upon more pleasant people. Had she done right in allowing Hollis to see that she was interested in him? Would he think less of her for revealing this interest? She could not answer these questions, but she could answer another–one that brought the blushes to her cheeks. Why had Hollis shown an interest in her? She had known this answer for a long time–when she had read Ace’s poem to him while sitting on the porch beside him, to be perfectly accurate. She had pretended then to take offense when he had assured her that Ace had succeeded in getting much truth into his lines, especially into the first couplet, which ran:
“Woman–she don’t need no tutor,
Be she school ma’am or biscuit shooter.”
The language had not been graceful, nor the diction, yet she knew that Ace had struck the mark fairly, for woman indeed needed no tutor to teach her to understand man–woman had always understood him.
She dismounted from her pony at the edge of the porch, hitching the animal to one of the slender porch columns. Then she went into the house to gather up the few things that still remained there.
But for a long time after entering the cabin she sat on a chair in the kitchen, sobbing softly, for now that Ed had gone she felt the desolation of the country more than ever. Presently she rose and with a start looked out of the door. The dusk had fallen; darkness was stealing into the valley around the cabin!