And then for a time Shattuck, pacing the length of the room and pausing at the window, marked neither approach nor departure. The shadows were lengthening; the moon was low in the sky; the neighboring massive mountains were darkly and heavily empurpled against the pensively illumined horizon. At their base the valley slept; it wot little of the opaline mists that gathered above it, and enmeshed elusive enchantments of color, which vanished before the steady gaze seeking to grade them as blue or amber or green, and to fix their status in the spectrum. A strange pause seemed to hold the world. Only the pines breathed faintly. Beneath their boughs he saw suddenly Letitia Pettingill sitting on a log of the great wood-pile. Her pale-blue homespun dress seemed white in the moonlight. She leaned back, her hands clasping her head, which rested upon the higher logs behind her, her eyes fixed contemplatively upon the slow sinking of the reddening moon.
Another had observed her there. It was only a moment or two before a tall figure sauntered out from the house and stood near by with a casual air, surveying not her, but the aspects of the departing night or the coming day, as retrospection or anticipation might denominate the hour. Shattuck with a frown recognized the figure; it was easily marked; its height and breadth and muscle would suffice to distinguish it, without the added testimony of the long tousled ringlets and the square, stern, martial face, overshadowed by a broad-brimmed hat. Guthrie's pistol and a knife gleamed in his leather belt. His long boots jingled with the replaced spurs, but he made no move toward departure, and his horse still stood, half in the shadow and half in the sheen, drowsing under a dogwood-tree. It was only after he had waited some time thus silent and motionless that he slowly cast his surly, long-lashed eyes toward Letitia. If she had seen him, she made no sign. Still clasping the back of her shapely head with both uplifted hands, she sat, half reclining, against the logs, and watched the moon go down. The initiative was forced upon him. There was a latent capacity for expressiveness suggested in the surprise and uncertainty and subtle disappointment depicted upon his face. He advanced slowly to the wood-pile, and sat down on one of the lower logs, his booted and spurred legs stretched out before him, one hand upon his hip, his hat thrust back, his ringleted head bare to the dew and the sheen. Still she did not move nor glance toward him. As his eyes absently traversed the space about them, he caught sight of Shattuck turning away from the roof-room window. Whether from a full heart, or in despair that she would break the silence, or on a sudden impulse which the glimpse of the stranger roused, he spoke abruptly, reverting to the scenes of the evening.
"I reckon ye air in an' about sati'fied now with what ye hev up-ed an' done," he drawled, slowly.
She unclasped her hands that she might turn her head and look steadily at him for a moment. Her lustrous illumined blue eyes either showed their fine color in the ethereal light of the moon, or the recollection of it was substituted for the sense of it in the sudden adequateness of their expression. Her gaze relaxed, and she resumed her former attitude. The interval was so long before she spoke that the reply seemed hardly pertinent.
"Ever see me wear a shootin'-iron?" she demanded. Her voice was not loud, but it had a vibratory quality like that of a stringed instrument, rather than a flute-like tone.
He stared at her. "Hey?" he demanded. "What ye say?"
She did not change her posture now. "Ever see me pound ennybody on the head with a shootin'-iron?" she continued.
"Shucks!" he cried, slowly apprehending her meaning; "ye can't git out'n it that-a-way."
"I never war in it. When ye see somebody o' my size in a fight with one o' yer size, let me know it."
"'Twar yer fault, an' ye know that full well," he made himself plain, with an intonation of severity.