He paced lightly across the first shallow ford. Then the narrowing walls of the cañon echoed his clean-cut steps—a patter of phantom hoof-beats following him, stride for stride. Down the long, ever-winding road they swung.
Louise, impelled to dreams by the languorous warm night and Boyar's easy stride up the steep, touched his neck with the rein and turned him into the Old Meadow Trail.
The tall, slender stems of the yucca and infrequent clumps of dwarfed cacti cast clear-edged shadows on the bare, moonlit ground. Boyar, sniffing, suddenly swung up and pivoted, his fore feet hanging over sheer black emptiness. Louise leaned forward, reining him round. Even before his fore feet touched the trail again, she heard the sibilant bur-r-ing of the cold, uncoiling thing as it slid down the blind shadows of the hillside.
"I shan't believe in omens," she murmured.
She reassured the trembling Boyar, who fretted sideways and snorted as he passed the spot where the snake had been coiled in the trail.
At the edge of the Old Meadow the girl dismounted, allowing Boyar to graze at will.
She climbed to the low rounded rock, her erstwhile throne of dreams, where she sat with knees gathered to her in her clasped hands. The pony paused in his grazing to lift his head and look at her with gently wondering eyes.
The utter solitude of the place, far above the viewless valley, allowed her thought a horizon impossible at the Moonstone Rancho. Alone she faced the grave question of making an unalterable choice. Collie had asked her to marry him. She had evaded direct reply to his direct question. She knew of no good reason why she should marry him. She knew of no better reason why she should not. She thought she was content with being loved. She was, for the moment.
The Old Meadow, that had once before revealed a sprightly and ragged romance, slumbered in the southern night; slumbered to awaken to the hushed tread of men and strange whisperings.
Down in the valley the coyotes called dismally, with that infinite shrill sadness of wild things that hunger, and in their wailing pulsed the eternal and unanswerable "Why?" challenging the peaceful stars. Something in their questioning cry impelled Louise to lift her hands to the night. "What is it? What is it up there—behind everything—that never, never answers?"