Trafford smiled and touched the revolver in his belt. Johnson eyed the spare but muscular figure clad in the rough and semi-digger clothes which Trafford had procured at Ballarat, and nodded approvingly.
“You’ll do,” he said. “I don’t know what yer business is at Three Star, an’ I don’t want to know, but I’ll bet yer’ll carry it through!” and he held out his paw.
Trafford shook it, and getting into his saddle, rode off. His heart beat fast as he found himself galloping along the Three Star road. Along this road Esmeralda must have often traveled. As he looked round upon the wide-stretching plains with their background of towering hills, the whole place seemed to breathe to him of Esmeralda. He could picture her, a slim and graceful girl, not clad in the costly raiment of a London ball-room, but in the short blue skirt and wide felt hat which she had so often described to him. He could understand how strange and bewildering to her must have been the change from these wild solitudes to the whirlpool of fashionable life; how bitterly she must have contrasted the falseness, the selfishness, the self-seeking of his aristocratic set with the simple natures of the rough but honest and genuine folk with whom she had been brought up.
As he rode on, the scenery grew more beautiful and seemed to him still more eloquent of her presence; seemed, in its loveliness, to be part and parcel of the beautiful girl whom he had held in his hands but to let slip and lose forever. He was so touched by his thoughts, that once or twice he found himself breathing her name softly and sadly. The horse was a good one, and carried him quite easily; he paid little attention to his way, so absorbed was he in his reverie, and when he suddenly found himself at a part of the road from which forks branched right and left, he pulled up, realizing that he had forgotten the precise directions which Johnson had given him.
He was in a dilemma. It would be night before very long, and it behooved him to reach the camp without delay. He looked from right to left with a puzzled frown; then it struck him that he would let the horse choose; no doubt it had often traveled the road before. The horse, after a moment’s hesitation, chose the left fork—and the wrong one.
Trafford rode on and found the road rougher than the one he had left, and more winding. After a time it dwindled to a mere track; but Trafford had no serious misgivings, for he thought that there would not be any very great traffic between Three Star and the station, and he trusted, in this case wrongly, to his horse. But presently the horse stopped and looked vaguely from side to side, as a horse will do when it wonders what its master would be at.
Trafford did not like to turn back, for he was as uncertain about the other road as he was concerning this, and it occurred to him that the track must lead somewhere, so he put the horse to a trot and rode on. After covering some miles, the track mounted a hill to escape a torrent, and then, to Trafford’s disappointment, dipped down again toward the valley.
Half-way down he pulled up to consider. The solitude was intense, and, to a man fresh from the crowds of England, somewhat awe-inspiring. The mountains towered above him, the torrent roared in the valley below, a bird rose from the undergrowth and darted upward with a shrill cry.
As he sat upon his horse and gazed round him, he thought of his past life and all its follies. What was human ambition and all its vexing vanities worth in this vast solitude? He thought of Esmeralda, and his heart ached for his wife as only a strong man’s can ache. If she were only by his side now, to share with him the mystic beauty of this scene, the solitude would then be transformed to a paradise like to that in which our forefather and foremother moved and loved.
As the reflection lingered in his mind, he heard the soft thud, thud of horses’ feet. It came so softly as to seem rather a part of his waking dreams than reality. He sat motionless for a moment or two; then he remembered the driver’s warning, and, dismounting from his horse, cautiously drew it behind a projecting rock, and watched and listened.