“Smith called you to the box to help him, he told me later, because he picked you out as a man who would put up a fight,” said she.
“Well, let us hope that he made a good guess,” Slavens said, “for here’s where we take up the racket with the world again.”
“We changed places on the coach that day; you took the post of danger,” she reflected, her eyes roaming the browning hills and coming back to his face with a caress in their placid depths.
“Yes,” he said, slowly, gravely; “where a man belongs.”
Dr. Slavens gathered up his reins to go, yet lingered a little, looking out over the gray leagues of that vast land unfolded with its new adventures at his feet. Agnes drew near, turned in her saddle to view again the place of desolation strewn over with its monumental stones.
“This is my Gethsemane,” she said.
“It was cursed and unholy when I came to it; I leave it sanctified by my most precious memory,” said he. 352
He rode on; Agnes, pressing after, came yet a little way behind, content to have it so, his breast between her and the world. And that was the manner of their going from the place of stones.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGH’S NOVELS