The fellow squinted up at her with eyes half-shut, in an expression of cunning.
“Now you trot along back and behave you’self, before I have to take you down and spank you,” he said.
The other three men of the ranch guard came waddling up in that slouching gait of saddle-men, cigarettes dangling from their lips. Frances saw that she would not be allowed to pass that way. But they were all at that spot; none of them could be watching the back gate. She wheeled her long-legged cavalry horse to make a dash for it, and came face to face with Mrs. Chadron, who was hurrying from the house with excited gesticulations, pointing up the road.
“Somebody’s comin’, it looks like one of the boys, I saw him from the upstairs winder!” she announced, “Where was you goin’, honey?”
“I was starting home, Mrs. Chadron, but these men—”
“There he comes!” cried Mrs. Chadron, hastening to the gate.
A horseman had come around the last brush-screened turn of the road, and was drawing near. Frances felt her heart leap like a hare, and a delicious feeling of triumph mingle with the great pride that swept through her in a warm flood. Tears were in her eyes, half-blinding her; a sob of gladness rose in her breast and burst forth a little happy cry.
For that was Alan Macdonald coming forward on his weary horse, bearing something in his arms wrapped in a blanket, out of which a shower of long hair fell in bright cascade over his arm.
Mrs. Chadron pressed her lips tight. Neither cry nor groan came out of them as she stood steadying herself by a straining grip on the gate, watching Macdonald’s approach. None of them knew whether the burden that he bore was living or dead; none of them in the group at the gate but Frances knew the rider’s face.