But there was nothing in his past to justify her confidence in his future. Women worth having did not marry forlorn hopes in the expectation of making a profit out of them by and by. He had no hearth to offer her; he had no thatch; he had not a rood of land to lead a mountain stream across and set with the emerald and royal purple of alfalfa; not a foot of greensward beside the river, where a yeaning ewe might lie and ease the burden of her pains. He had nothing to offer, nothing to give. If he asked, it must be to receive all and return nothing, except whatever of constancy time might prove out of his heart.
If he had even a plan to lay down before her and ask her to share, it would be something, he thought; or a brave resolve, like her own. But there was emptiness all around him; his feet could not find a square yard of solid earth to shape his future upon. It was not that he believed that she cared for money or the material rewards of success, for she had spoken bitterly of that. The ghosts of money’s victims were behind her; she had said as much the first time they had talked of their hopes in that new land. 96
There must be something in that place for him, as she had said; there must be an unimproved opportunity which Fate had fashioned for his hand. Hope lifted its resilient head again. Before the morning he must have a plan, and when he had the plan he would speak.
“We’ll have to be breaking up camp in a day or two more,” Agnes said, disturbing the long silence which had settled between them.
“I suppose so,” he responded; “but I don’t know what the plans of the others are.”
“Mr. Strong is going to Meander in the morning,” she told him; “and Horace Bentley is going with him, poor fellow, to look around, he says. William Bentley told me this evening that he would leave for home in a day or two, and Mrs. Reed and her charges are waiting to hear from a friend of June’s who was in school with her–I think she is the Governor’s daughter, or maybe he’s an ex-governor–about a long-standing invitation to visit her in her summer home, which is near here, as they compute distances in Wyoming.”
“And Schaefer is leaving in the morning,” reflected the doctor. “That leaves but you and me unaccounted for. Are you going on to Meander soon?”
“Yes; I want to be there to file when my time comes.”
“I’ve thought of going over there to feel things out, too,” Dr. Slavens went on. “This place will shrink in a few days like a piece of wet leather in the sun. They’ll have nothing left of it but the stores, and no business to sustain them until the country around here 97 is settled. That may be a long time yet. Still, there may be something around here for me. I’m going to look into the possibilities tomorrow. And we’ll have at least another talk before we part?”
“Many more, I hope,” she said.