He looked at her gravely. Of course. He had known it a long time. It was true. She was going to belong to him. If that brute had hurt her!
She shrank under his gravity; this was something she did not understand. They were silent, walking toward the encampment. Rickard did not care to talk. It was not the time; and he had been badly shaken. Innes was tremulously conscious of the palpitating silence. She fluttered toward giddy speech. Her walk that day, Mr. Rickard! She had heard that water had started to flow down the old river-bed; she had wanted to see it, and there was no one to go with her. Her sentence broke off. The look he had turned on her was so dominant, so tender. Amused at her giddiness, and yet loving her! Loving her! They were silent again.
“You won’t go off alone, again.” He had not asked it, at parting. His inflection demanding it of her, was of ownership. She did not meet his eyes.
Later, when she was lying on her bed, face downward, routed, she tried to analyze that possessive challenge of his gaze, but it eluded words. She summoned her pride, but the meaning called her, sense and mind and soul of her. It cried to her: “I, Casey Rickard, whom your brother hates, once the lover of Gerty Holmes, I am the mate for you. And I’m going to come and take you some day. Some day, when I have time!”
Oh, yes, she was angry with him; she had some pride. “Why didn’t he tell me then?” she cried in a warm tumult to her pillow. “For I would have given him his answer. I had time, ample time, to tell him that it was not true.” For she wanted a different sort of lover, not a second-hand discard; but one who belonged all to herself; one who would woo, not take her with that strange sure look of his. “You’ll be waiting when I come.” Ah, she would not, indeed! She would show him!
And then she lay quite still with her hand over her heart. She would be waiting when he came for her! Because, though life had brought them together so roughly, so tactlessly had muddled things, yet she knew. She would be waiting for him!
Before he had left her, Rickard had followed a swift impulse. Those bronze lamps averted still? Was she remembering—last night? No mistake like that should rest between them. He must set that straight. That much he allowed himself. Until his work was done. But she knew—she had seen—how it was with him!
“I wonder if you would help me, Miss Hardin? Would you do something for that poor crazed woman? I wanted to ask Mrs. Hardin, but for some reason I’ve got into her black books. The Mexican needs help,—she ran away from her children, she thought the suspicion would fall on her—I suppose we must not blame her for cowardice. Just the little kindness one woman can give another. A man finds it difficult. And these Mexican women don’t understand a man’s friendship.”
Her eyes met his squarely. His tantalizing smile had gone. He was making a demand of her—to believe him, his request his defense. The glances, of yellow eyes and gray, met with a shock, and the world was changed for both. Life, with its many glad voices, was calling to senses and spirit, the girl’s still rebellious, the man’s sure.
It was the serene hour of the day. The work of the day was done, save Ling’s and the river shifts’. The wonderful slow evening of the desert was unfolding. Beyond, the distant deep-shadowed mountains, which shut them out from the world, made a jagged rent across the sky.