Give my very best regards to the Captain and to Mr. Avery. Home early in April.
He read the message again and again, looking curiously at the way she had formed the letters. Then he muttered:
"Why didn't she send it to Jed—or to the Captain?"
When Jed came into the cabin VB asked him, as though it were a matter of great concern:
"Where's that calendar we had around here?"
That night the young fellow lay awake long hours. The thirst had come again. Not so ravishing as it used to be, not inspiring all the old terror, but still it was there, and as it tugged at his throat and teased from every fiber of his being, he thought of Gail Thorpe—and tossed uneasily.
"Why?" he asked himself. "Why is it that the thirst calls so loudly when I think of that girl?"
He could not answer, and suddenly the query seemed so portentous that he sat up in bed, prying the darkness with his eyes, as though to find a solution of the enigma there. And his wandering mind, circling and doubling and shooting out in crazy directions, settled back on the Captain, and with it the hurt of his jumping nerves became dulled.
He closed his eyes, picturing the great stallion as he had first seen him, standing there on a little rim-rock protecting his band of mares, watching with regal scorn the approach of his adversary.
"And his spirit didn't break," VB muttered. "It's all there, just as sound as it ever was—but it's standing for different things. It's no longer defiance—it's love."