Helplessly she stood watching while he caught the horses and saddled them. The black one yielded quietly enough, but Buck, according to his usual habit, filled the whole rock-walled space with his plunging and rearing, a small but spirited sample of the Wild West. He had to yield at last, however and was led to where his mistress was waiting. John Herrick’s hat was off and his fair hair was ruffled by the wind and by his struggles with the reluctant pony. Beatrice noticed as never before how like he was to Aunt Anna. Since she had done so much harm already, she felt she might make one more effort.
“Aren’t you coming back?” she questioned desperately.
“No,” he answered, “I am never coming back.”
He swung into the saddle and, with a great rattling of stones dislodged by the pony’s hoofs, he was off up the steep trail. It might have been that he looked back, once, to see a bright-haired girl hide her face in her arm and bow her head against the rock, while a white-nosed pony nuzzled her shoulder in vain effort to offer comfort. But if John Herrick looked back he paid no heed.
CHAPTER XII
DEAD MAN’S MILE
It was comfort rather than advice that a very weary and dispirited Beatrice needed when at last she arrived at Dr. Minturn’s house. She greeted the rosy, laughing Nancy with much enthusiasm, for the sisters had missed each other sorely; but she was impatient for the moment when she could talk over their whole affair with the kindly doctor. After supper, accordingly, he sat, on the grassy bank in the moonlight, with a girl on each side of him, and listened gravely to all that Beatrice, with occasional additions from Nancy, had to say. It was not easy for her to confess what harm she had done by her impulsive and over confident words, but she told her story bravely to the end.
“There is no use in the world,” the doctor commented cheerfully, “in spending time in vain remorse. We should decide what must be done now. It may be, the only thing is to wait.”
Beatrice drew a deep quivering sigh. It seemed, in the midst of excitement and the anxiety to atone, that waiting was the one intolerable thing.
“I can’t bear to wait,” she burst out at last.
“I have never told you,” Dr. Minturn rejoined slowly, “of how Miriam and I came to live here. We used to be in a big city and we had that same full, restless life that most city dwellers know. Some people thrive in such an atmosphere, some can endure it, but it was destruction to us both. I had more patients than I could care for, Miriam’s days were as crowded as mine. We saw each other little and were always tired when our daily duties were done. I realized vaguely that such unceasing toil must kill any man before long, but the excitement of my growing practice was something I could not give up. Then Miriam, one day, asked me some questions; she knew some one who had such and such symptoms, who felt this way during the smoky winter and that way when the air was damp and the wind was raw. I was in haste and my verdict was quick. ‘Such a person could not live a year,’ I declared. And then she told me the person was herself!”