“I didn’t care for him,” she said so low he could hardly hear the words.
He laid his hand on hers, gathering up her small fingers in his large grasp.
“Why?” he repeated, pressing them.
She turned away in evident distress and he whispered:
“Was it because you loved me?”
Her head drooped and he put his lips almost against her cheek as he whispered again:
“It was. I know it.”
They were silent once more, neither looking at the other now. Both trembled, guilt and fear strong in their hearts.
At this moment a rabbit sprang from a sage bush across the path, and the horse, curling backward in a spasm of fear, rose to its hind legs and then leaped forward along the road. It took Jerry a full five minutes to control him and turn his head toward home.
“I’ll take you back now,” he said, throwing the words sidewise at her as they flew onward. “I’ll stop at the mouth of Crazy Saunders’ Tunnel. You can walk in from there. If I drove you into town some idiot would see us and make talk. I never saw anything like this place. If Saint Cecilia and Jephthah’s daughter settled here for a week they’d cook up some gossip about them.”