“Do you want me to break my vow to my state?” He groaned after a time. “Would you ruin a man? Do you want me killed before my day’s over? I love you, and it cannot be.”
“I suppose not.” Her voice dreamed. “I said, you are avenged. But I suppose I was wrong about—about calling you a thief. That trial—I suppose I ought to tell you——”
“That’s too late! I told you, I can never change. That’s my curse—I can’t change. My honor is as good as you are good, and I know you are. But you doubted me once. It was forever. I don’t know how to forgive that, for man or woman. And even if you hadn’t, I’m not for you. Unclean! Unclean! Look at my hands—they’re red, I say. Look at yours—white, sweet, good.”
He choked, struggled; could no more than crush her hands to his lips.
“It’s not for us!” he said at last. “Yes, I’m a thief. I’m almost a coward. I did not know. I’ll never ask you to forgive me. Let me go. Let me finish my work. If I live, when I’m old and done and crippled, let me come and kiss the hem of your garment. There are—there must be—other men. They say there’s more than one love, for a woman. I don’t know. I reckon that’s not true. Oh, if I could only change!”
But even so he could not go. Frowning, he caught her face in his steel-like hands once more, and at the flame ripple of her hair above her temple kissed her again and again and yet again where he had seen her cup her hand over the first kiss he gave her—stolen also—in the dark.
He was gone. What comfort for her now? Or what for him? There is no such thing as fairness in love between man and woman.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE INDIAN NATIONS
NO blue smoke rose against the far horizon of the wild paradise through which these pioneers of a new industry were passing. Civilized, semi-civilized, even savage mankind lacked then in the Nations. The country was unsettled and unknown. The men of Del Sol neither followed nor intersected any trail of hoof or wheel. Only the deep paths of the buffalo, immemorial, marked the green carpet of unbroken sod. There never had been hoof of any domestic creature here. The bands of horses that swept away were wild horses. Wild deer, wild antelope made their only neighbors. There was not a weed. There was not a bee. The white man had not come.
Of them all, not one Del Sol man had any idea of the country ahead. They were only holding to the easiest way, the ridges that separated the heads of divergent streams.