“All right. Pity you hadn’t come earlier. Mrs. Mills left only a couple of hours ago. But I’ll ride over this afternoon, get her written authority, then meet you at the railroad.”
Riding back to Los Arboles, they perfected their plans. They were, indeed, in sight of the buildings before Benson switched the conversation to Lee. Her oldest and stanchest friend, it was his right to know, and Bull told all, from his plotting with the widow down to the disastrous ending in the sudden engagement.
“The little spitfire!” Benson grinned. “Hello! What’s that?”
It was Lee’s horse galloping down a distant slope toward the hacienda. In that wild country a riderless beast generally bespoke tragedy. Without a word they galloped off in the direction from which the beast had come; rode at top speed until Benson, who had gained a lead, suddenly reined in.
A bunch of chaparral intervened, at first, between Bull and the object at which the other was pointing. Then, rising in his stirrups, he saw Lee and Gordon on the one horse; at least in Bull’s sight it was a horse. In that of the lovers, horses, plains, haciendas, and other commonplaces of ordinary existence had vanished, leaving them unconscious of time and space, proceeding magically through the aforesaid illumined dream.
Perhaps some touch of their feeling wirelessed across the intervening space, for Benson’s harshness melted, delight burst like sunlight through Bull’s truculence.
“That’s too good to spoil,” Benson whispered. “Let them go by.”
They had passed over the next ridge before Bull spoke. “I tol’ you Mrs. Mills could do it. She’s a right smart woman.”
“A fine woman!” Benson echoed. “I don’t know what you are thinking about. Now if I were single——” He burst out laughing at Bull’s blush. Instantly it was drowned in brighter scarlet. But this faded as Bull noted the kindly twinkle in the other’s eye. He shook his head in deprecation.
“What c’d a nice woman do with a bear like me?”