She started away, stopped a few rods beyond the fence, came back.
"There's always a place for a good man over at our ranch," she said.
He watched her braid of hair swinging from side to side as she galloped away, with no regret for his rejected truce of the fence. She would come back to cut it again, and again he would see her. Disloyal as it might be to his employer, he hoped she would not delay the next excursion long.
He had found her. No matter for the conditions under which the discovery had been made, his quest was at an end, his long flights of fancy were done. It was a marvelous thing for him, more wonderful than the realization of his first expectations would have been. This wild spirit of the girl was well in accord with the character he had given her in his imagination. When he watched her away that day at Misery he knew she was the kind of woman who would exact much of a man; as he looked after her anew he realized that she would require more.
The man who found his way to her heart would have to take up her hatreds, champion her feuds, ride in her forays, follow her wild will against her enemies. He would have to sink the refinements of his civilization, in a measure, discard all preconceived ideas of justice and honor. He would have to hate a fence.
The thought made him smile. He was so happy that he had found her that he could have absolved her of a deeper blame than this. He felt, indeed, as if he had come to the end of vast wanderings, a peace as of the cessation of turmoils in his heart. Perhaps this was because of the immensity of the undertaking which so lately had lain before him, its resumption put off from day to day, its proportions increasing with each deferment.
He made no movement to dismount and hook up the cut wires, but sat looking after her as she grew smaller between him and the hill. He was so wrapped in his new and pleasant fancies that he did not hear the approach of a horse on the slope of the rise until its quickened pace as it reached the top brought Vesta Philbrook suddenly into his view.
"Who is that?" she asked, ignoring his salutation in her excitement.
"I think it must be Miss Kerr; she belongs to that family, at least."
"You caught her cutting the fence?"