It seemed to him he heard a breath, a whisper, a soft word that said "good-bye." It had a tenderness that set a lump in his throat, but it was followed almost at once with a calmer commonplace.
"We must go back," said Mary Ellen. "It is growing dark."
Franklin wheeled the team sharply about toward the house, which was indeed becoming indistinct in the falling twilight. As the vehicle turned about, the crunching of the wheels started a great gray prairie owl, which rose almost beneath the horses' noses and flapped slowly off. The apparition set the wild black horse into a sudden simulation of terror, as though he had never before seen an owl upon the prairies. Rearing and plunging, he tore loose the hook of one of the single-trees, and in a flash stood half free, at right angles now to the vehicle instead of at its front, and struggling to break loose from the neck-yoke. At the moment they were crossing just along the head of one of the coulees, and the struggles of the horse, which was upon the side next to the gully, rapidly dragged his mate down also. In a flash Franklin saw that he could not get the team back upon the rim, and knew that he was confronted with an ugly accident. He chose the only possible course, but handled the situation in the best possible way. With a sharp cut of the whip he drove the attached horse down upon the one that was half free, and started the two off at a wild race down the steep coulee, into what seemed sheer blackness and immediate disaster. The light vehicle bounded up and down and from side to side as the wheels caught the successive inequalities of the rude descent, and at every instant it seemed it must surely be overthrown. Yet the weight of the buggy thrust the pole so strongly forward that it straightened out the free horse by the neck and forced him onward. In some way, stumbling and bounding and lurching, both horses and vehicle kept upright all the way down the steep descent, a thing which to Franklin later seemed fairly miraculous. At the very foot of the pitch the black horse fell, the buggy running full upon him as he lay lashing out. From this confusion, in some way never quite plain to himself, Franklin caught the girl out in his arms, and the next moment was at the head of the struggling horses. And so good had been his training at such matters that it was not without method that he proceeded to quiet the team and to set again in partial order the wreck that had been created in the gear. The end of the damaged singletree he re-enforced with his handkerchief. In time he had the team again in harness, and at the bottom of the coulee, where the ground sloped easily down into the open valley, whence they might emerge at the lower level of the prairie round about. He led the team for a distance down this floor of the coulee, until he could see the better going in the improving light which greeted them as they came out from the gully-like defile. Cursing his ill fortune, and wretched at the thought of the danger and discomfort he had brought upon the very one whom he would most gladly have shielded, Franklin said not a word from the beginning of the mad dash down the coulee until he got the horses again into harness. He did not like to admit to his companion how great had been the actual danger just incurred, though fortunately escaped. The girl was as silent as himself. She had not uttered a cry during the time of greatest risk, though once she laid a hand upon his arm. Franklin was humiliated and ashamed, as a man always is over an accident.
"Oh, it's no good saying I'm sorry," he broke out at last. "It was my fault, letting you ride behind that brute. Thank God, you're not hurt! And I'm only too glad it wasn't worse. I'm always doing some unfortunate, ignoble thing. I want to take care of you and make you happy, and I would begin by putting your very life in danger."
"It wasn't ignoble," said the girl, and again he felt her hand upon his arm. "It was grand. You went straight, and you brought us through. I'm not hurt. I was frightened, but I am not hurt."
"You've pluck," said Franklin. Then, scorning to urge anything further of his suit at this time of her disadvantage, though feeling a strange new sense of nearness to her, now that they had seen this distress in common, he drove home rapidly as he might through the gathering dusk, anxious now only for her comfort. At the house he lifted her from the buggy, and as he did so kissed her cheek. "Dear little woman," he whispered, "good-bye." Again he doubted whether he had heard or not the soft whisper of a faint "Good-bye!"
"But you must come in," she said.
"No, I must go. Make my excuses," he said. "Good-bye!" The horses sprang sharply forward. He was gone.
The roll of the wheels and the rhythmic hoof-beats rapidly lessened to the ear as Franklin drove on into the blackening night. In her own little room Mary Ellen sat, her face where it might have been seen in profile had there been a light or had the distant driver looked round to see. Mary Ellen listened—listened until she could hear hoof and wheel no more. Then she cast herself upon the bed, face downward, and lay motionless and silent. Upon the little dresser lay a faded photograph, fallen forward also upon its face, lying unnoticed and apparently forgot.