The spoor left by his horse the night before was clear in the starlight. He told Daddy John to follow it and drew up beside the track to let the wagon pass him. Motionless he watched the girl's approaching figure, and saw her rein her horse to a standstill.
"Come on," he said softly. "I want to speak to you."
She touched the horse and it started toward him. As she came nearer he could see the troubled shine of her eyes.
"Why are you afraid?" he said, as he fell into place beside her. "We're friends now."
She made no answer, her head bent till her face was hidden by her hat. He laid his hand on her rein and brought the animal to a halt.
"Let the wagon get on ahead," he whispered. "We'll follow at a distance."
The whisper, so low that the silence was unbroken by it, came to her, a clear sound carrying with it a thrill of understanding. She trembled and—his arm against hers as his hand held her rein—he felt the subdued vibration like the quivering of a frightened animal. The wagon lumbered away with the sifting dust gushing from the wheels. A stirred cloud rose upon its wake and they could feel it thick and stifling in their nostrils. She watched the receding arch cut down the back by the crack in the closed canvas, while he watched her. The sound of crushed twigs and straining wheels lessened, the stillness gathered between these noises of laboring life and the two mounted figures. As it settled each could hear the other's breathing and feel a mutual throb, as though the same leaping artery fed them both. In the blue night encircled by the waste, they were as still as vessels balanced to a hair in which passion brimmed to the edge.
"Come on," she said huskily, and twitched her reins from his hold.
The horses started, walking slowly. A strip of mangled sage lay in front, back of them the heavens hung, a star-strewn curtain. It seemed to the man and woman that they were the only living things in the world, its people, its sounds, its interests, were in some undescried distance where life progressed with languid pulses. How long the silence lasted neither knew. He broke it with a whisper:
"Why did you get David the water last night?"