Such parts of the long frame as were not pinned in plaster writhed. Dunstan's thoughts went to Minga—what did she think of it all? Did she feel the same way, like one carrying a great burden? The bullet of the guard who had shot Terry had barely escaped Minga's head before the car had overturned and he, Dunstan, who ought by his very man's nature to have protected her, had brought her into all this. Oh, he was a nice chap, a splendid fellow. Ah, well, civilization was a trap anyway, a scheme, a plan to defeat frank square things. The thing to do was to cast off the whole silly rot, get off somewhere, where a man got out of the cheap lying pattern of things, where a man really lived, realized himself, rode, killed, loved, hated without a pink worsted design to remind him that he had "broken the law."
Sard looked over at him. "Stop squirming!" she ordered sternly, then—"Dear old Pirate, don't you know that convalescing is the hardest time of all?" She went over to the bed, scrutinizing her brother. "Is the light in your eyes?" she asked anxiously. "Shall I read to you? Do you want a fresh drink?"
"I want a fresh Hades," growled the invalid. "I want——" All of a sudden Dunstan's face broke; he could not move, but lay here shaking. The girl, looking away from him, was silent.
"If Minga would only write," at last he groaned.
"Perhaps she doesn't know what to say," comforted the sister.
"Dunce," said Sard thoughtfully; she stood by the bed. "Dunce," in a mild patience unlike her, "I guess you and I are up against it, aren't we? We must have, somewhere, ancestors not like Dad and little Mother and Aunt Aurelia, race-horse ancestors that wanted things to happen and to happen quick bang, right off, and they don't, they just won't. No matter what we do, we have to wait, no matter how much we care," said Sard slowly, "we just have to wait; everybody has to wait, I guess. It's a sort of law."
"Terry didn't wait," said Dunce bitterly; "he, thank God, got out."
"I've been reading," she returned thoughtfully, she was trying to draw him out of this mood, "a book that tells how Venice grew up out of the sea; and it seems like life somehow. The streams came down from the mountains carrying grains, just grains, Dunce, of sand, and the ice and snow rolled down more clay and sand, all the currents of the sea kept carrying deposits to one spot until," absorbedly the girl recounted the dreamy geologic tale, her eyes fixed on distance. Dunstan heard her through patiently.
"Sounds like the rags old Colter used to chew," he said, not uninterestedly. "By the way, Sard, what became of that mucker; turned out to be a ne'er-do-well, after all? What?"
His companion was silent. Something in her face contracted as she tried to answer lightly. "Oh, I guess he's all right. Mr. Shipman has been following him up. He was ill after he left here. Then he went to work somewhere, and then I don't exactly know," said Sard. "Mr. Shipman is keeping his eye on him. I don't exactly know——"