But love shuddered and grew pale in the cold nearness of death. The kiss so long deferred was not given, and the fluttering pulse which had warmed to welcome it fell slow, as one who strikes a long stride in a journey that has miles yet to measure before its end.
Governor Boyle was back in camp in the middle of the afternoon, and before night the tents and furnishings for lodging the party comfortably arrived from Comanche. The Governor pressed Agnes, who was considering riding to Comanche to find lodging, to 331 remain there to assist and comfort his wife when she should arrive.
“We need the touch of a woman’s hand here,” said he.
They brought Jerry’s tent and set it up for her. She was asleep at dusk.
Mrs. Boyle arrived next morning, having started as soon as the messenger bearing news of the tragedy reached the ranch. She was a slight, white-haired woman, who had gone through hardships before coming to prosperity on that frontier, so the fifty-mile ride in a wagon was no unusual or trying experience for her.
Whatever tears she had for her son’s sad plight she had spent on the rough journey over. As she sat beside him stroking his heavy hair back from his pallid brow, there was in her face a shadow of haunting anxiety, as if the recollection of some old time of terror added its pangs to those of the present.
Her presence in camp, and her constant ministrations at her son’s side, relieved Dr. Slavens of considerable professional anxiety, as well as labor. It gave him time to walk about among the gigantic stones which cast their curse of barrenness over that broken stretch, Agnes with him, and make a further investigation of the land’s mineral possibilities.
“Ten-Gallon was telling the truth, in my opinion,” said he. “I have explored these rocks from line to line of this claim, and I reached the conclusion a good 332 many days ago that somebody had been misled in supposing it was worth money. It was nothing but Boyle’s persistent determination to get hold of it that gave it a color of value in my mind.”
“Still, it may be the means, after all, of yielding you as much as you expected to get out of it at the first,” she suggested.