But that evening at twilight when Boone crossed the stile, if the nod which greeted him was less cordial than custom had led him to expect, at least Cyrus spoke no hostile word. The old man was "biding his time," and as he rose and knocked the nub of ash out of his pipe-bowl, he announced curtly, "I'll tell Happy ye're hyar."
CHAPTER XXIII
Boone had stood for a moment in the lighted door, and in that interval the shrewd old eyes of Cyrus Spradling had told him that the boy too had known sleeplessness and that the clear-chiselled features bore unaccustomed lines of misery.
If they had both suffered equally, reasoned the rude philosopher, it augured a quarrel not wholly or guiltily one-sided.
So a few minutes later he watched them walking away together toward the creek bed, where the voice of the water trickled and the moonlight lay in a dreamy lake of silver.
"I reckon," he reassured himself, "they'll fix matters up ternight. Hit's a right happy moon for lovers ter mend th'ar quarrels by."
"Happy," began Boone, with moisture-beaded temples, when they had reached a spot remote enough to assure their being undisturbed, "I reckon I don't need to tell you that I haven't slept much since I saw you. I haven't been able to do anything at all except—just think about it."
"I've thought about it—a good deal—too," was her simple response, and Boone forced himself on, rowelling his lagging speech with a determined will power.
"I see now—that I didn't act like a man. I ought to have told you long ago—that I—that my heart was just burning up—about Anne."