“Here they are, Mr. Willoughby, all ready and waiting for us. Now we’ll show them how to play euchre.”
Before Willoughby appeared, responsive to this cheerful hail, Cora had pulled the chairs round the table and brought out the cards. A few moments later, they were seated and the game had begun. Cora and her partner were soon jubilant. Not only did they hold the cards, but their adversaries played so badly that the tale of many old scores was wiped off.
The next day the first movements of departure began. Early in the afternoon Buford and Judge Washburne started for Rocky Bar in Perley’s sleigh. The road had been broken by the mail-carrier, but was still so deeply drifted that the drive was reckoned a toilsome undertaking not without danger. Perley’s two powerful horses were harnessed in tandem, and Perley himself, a mere pillar of wrappings, drove them, squatted on a soap box in front of the two passengers. There were cries of farewell from the porch and tappings on the windows as the sleigh started and sped away to the diminishing jingle of bells. A sadness fell on those who watched it. The little idyl of isolation was over.
On the following day Bill Cannon and his daughter were to leave. A telegram had been sent to Rocky Bar for a sleigh and horses of the proper excellence to be the equipage of a Bonanza Princess. Rose had spent the morning packing the valises, and late in the afternoon began a down-stairs search for possessions left in the parlor.
The dusk was gathering as she entered the room, the corners of which were already full of darkness, the fire playing on them with a warm, varying light. Waves of radiance quivered and ran up the ceiling, here and there touching the glaze on a picture glass or china ornament. The crude ugliness of the place was hidden in this unsteady, transforming combination of shadow and glow. It seemed a rich, romantic spot, flushed with fire that pulsed on an outer edge of mysterious obscurity, a center of familiar, intimate life, round which coldness and the dark pressed.
She thought the room was unoccupied and advanced toward the table, then started before the uprising of Dominick’s tall figure from a chair in a shadowed corner. It was the first time they had seen each other alone since their conversation of the day before. Rose was startled and agitated, and her brusk backward movement showed it. Her voice, however, was natural, almost easy to casualness as she said,
“I thought there was no one here, you’ve hidden yourself in such a dark corner. I came to gather up my books and things.”
He advanced into the light, looking somberly at her.
“It’s true that you’re going to-morrow?” he said almost gruffly.
“Oh, yes, we’re really going. Everything’s been arranged. Horses and a sleigh are expected any moment now from Rocky Bar. They rest here all night and take us down in the afternoon. I think papa’d go crazy if we had to stay twenty-four hours longer.”