They did not draw rein until they were at the road gate of the little house. The woman rose, put down her knitting in the seat of her stiff, rush-bottomed rocker, advanced to the fence. The air was still, but Susan could not hear a sound, though she craned forward and strained her ears to the uttermost. She shrank as if she had been struck when the three began to gaze up at the rock—to gaze, it seemed to her, at the very spot where she was standing. Was her screen less thick than she thought? Had they seen—if not her, perhaps part of her dress?
Wildly her heart beat as Jeb dismounted from his horse the mare behind which she had made her wedding journey—and stood in the gateway, talking with the woman and looking toward the top of the rock. Zeke Warham turned his horse and began to ride slowly away. He got as far as the brow of the hill, with Jeb still in the gateway, hesitating. Then Susan heard:
"Hold on, Mr. Warham. I reckon you're right."
Warham halted his horse, Jeb remounted and joined him. As the woman returned toward the back doorstep, the two men rode at a walk down into the hollow. When they reappeared it was on the road by which they had come. And the girl knew the pursuit in that direction—the right direction—was over. Trembling and with a fluttering in her breast like the flapping of a bird's wings, she sank to the ground. Presently she burst into a passion of tears. Without knowing why, she tore off the wedding ring which until then she had forgotten, and flung it out among the treetops. A few minutes, and she dried her eyes and stood up. The two horsemen were leaving the landscape at the point at which they had entered it. The girl would not have known, would have been frightened by, her own face had she seen it as she watched them go out of her sight—out of her life. She did not understand herself, for she was at that age when one is no more conscious of the forces locked up within his unexplored and untested character than the dynamite cartridge is of its secrets of power and terror.
CHAPTER XI
SHE felt free to go now. She walked toward the place where she had left the eggs. It was on the side of the rock overlooking the creek. As she knelt to remove the leaves, she heard from far below a man's voice singing. She leaned forward and glanced down at the creek. In a moment appeared a young man with a fishing rod and a bag slung over his shoulder. His gray and white striped flannel trousers were rolled to his knees. His fair skin and the fair hair waving about his forehead were exposed by the flapping-brimmed straw hat set upon the back of his head. His voice, a strong and manly tenor, was sending up those steeps a song she had never heard before—a song in Italian. She had not seen what he looked like when she remembered herself and hastily fell back from view. She dropped to the grass and crawled out toward the ledge. When she showed her face it so happened that he was looking straight at her.
"Hello!" he shouted. "That you, Nell?"
Susan drew back, her blood in a tumult. From below, after a brief silence, came a burst of laughter.
She waited a long time, then through a shield of bunches of grass looked again. The young man was gone. She wished that he had resumed his song, for she thought she had never heard one so beautiful. Because she did not feel safe in descending until he was well out of the way, and because she was so comfortable lying there in the afternoon sunshine watching the birds and listening to them, she continued on there, glancing now and then at where the creek entered and where it left her range of vision, to make sure that no one else should come and catch her. Suddenly sounded a voice from somewhere behind her:
"Hey, Nell! I'm coming!"