"Good-bye, Mrs. Courtlandt. I hope that you'll—you'll——"
Jerry held out her hand with a smile.
"I shall always remember what you did for your lieutenant, Sergeant Beechy. Good luck; if you don't like the railroad come back to us." He gripped the hand she extended. Jerry gave his a warning pressure as she looked up and saw Steve regarding them intently. With a squeeze which made her see fifty-seven varieties of stars and their collateral branches, Beechy released her hand.
"Let's go, Lieutenant."
Jerry looked after the two as they strode away broad shoulder almost touching broad shoulder. Had they been girls they would have their arms around each other's waists, she was sure. What strange friendships the war had welded. Braggadocio had slipped from Beechy like a garment the instant he recognized Courtlandt's voice. He had assumed an entirely different personality. Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. The soldier was a much safer citizen than the man of peace, she told herself with a reminiscent shiver.
She picked up the papers on her desk, then dropped them. Steve had been emphatic about her going out. Suddenly she felt that she couldn't endure four walls a moment longer. She must be in the open. She pulled down the top of her desk and dashed through the flowering court to the house. She called Ming Soy to bring lunch to her room. She telephoned the corral to send up Patches.
In her cool, silvery gray linen riding clothes Jerry drew an ecstatic breath as she gave Patches his head. He pirouetted for a moment then settled to a steady canter. On all sides spread fields and pastures in luxuriant greenness. Beyond them mountains swept to hazy, purple heights. In one of the fields a rider turned and looked at her as she passed. She leaned forward in her saddle, opened a gate and closed it; she hoped the man had noticed with what ease it had been accomplished. Great blooded Shorthorns turned ruminative eyes upon her; she had seen women with that same expression when at a society function another entered as to whose social status they were in doubt. Off in a pen a perfect specimen of pure-blooded Ayreshire bull pawed the ground and sent showers of earth spraying on his satiny back. Where the trail left the flower-dotted meadow a spring bubbled from under a mushroom-shaped rock. Jerry dismounted and knelt for a drink, more for the feel of the sparkling water against her lips than because of thirst.
Where should she go, she wondered as she mounted Patches. She had an inspiration. She would make a neighborly call on the wife of the ex-service man at Bear Creek ranch. Jerry had never seen her, but Sandy the Carrier, who was the artery for news in the county, had told her that she was lonely.
The water was high in the stream. The banks were pink with wild roses and among their denseness the meadow-larks kept up an invisible chorus. Jerry forced Patches to a coquettish prance across the rustic bridge. It was there that the apex of the B C triangle of land forced its way between the Double O and the X Y Z. She knew the place; Tommy had shown her the dividing fences. From where the rushing water narrowed and whitened over a rocky bed an aged pack-trail staggered into a cuplike ravine. Rejuvenated by the sunshine in the hollow it straightened and sprinted straight as an arrow for the foot-hills. The sun shone warmly on lustrous fields. The air was spicy with the breath of pines. A rabbit hopped from cover and skurried back again.
As Patches, with ears pricked, silky neck preened, stepped daintily along the trail the girl sang happily: