"I may be a hypocrite," she told herself a little sternly, as she sat in the buckboard at her uncle's side. "But they are playing me for a little fool! And … and if they knew that I guessed…."
She shivered and Pollard asked if she were cold.
It was a swift drive with few words spoken. Winifred, her chin sunk in her wraps, seemed to be dozing much of the way, and Henry Pollard had enough to think about to make the silence grateful. The cream-coloured mares raced out across the level land of the valley, with little thought of the light wagon and much thought of the home stable and hay. And, racing on, they sped at last through the long alley-like street of Hill's Corners, into the glaring light from the saloons, by many shadows at the corners of houses, their ears smitten by much noise of loud voices and the clack of booted feet upon the board sidewalks. When Pollard jerked in his team at his own front gate, the girl slipped quickly from the buckboard, saying quietly:
"I think I'll go right up to bed, Uncle Henry. I'm a little tired. Thank you for taking me."
And when he said, "Good night, Winifred," she called back her good night to him, and hurried under the old pear trees to the house. In the hall she found her lamp burning where Mrs. Riddell had left it for her, and taking it up she climbed the stairs to her room.
At last she was alone and could think! Her door was locked, her light was out that no one might know she was awake, and she was crouching at the open window, staring out at the night.
Out of a tangle of many doubts, suspicions and live terrors there were at first two things which caught the high lights of her understanding, standing clear of the shadows which obscured the others. Buck Thornton was absolutely innocent of the thing she had imputed to him, and unsuspecting of the evidence which was being piled up against him. And her own uncle was the friend and the actual accomplice of the real criminal.
Her thoughts harked back to the beginning of the story as she knew it, reverting to that night when she had first seen Buck Thornton at Poke Drury's road house. From that she passed in review all that she knew of him; how he had come in while she was talking with the banker about the errand which was to carry her over a lonely trail to her uncle. At first she had been quick to suspect that Thornton had overheard a part of their conversation, that he had known from the first that she was carrying the five thousand dollars. Now she realized with a little twinge of bitter self-accusation that she had been over hasty in judging the man who had been kind to her.
She remembered how, on the trail from Dry Town, she had seen a man following her, a man whose face, at the distance he maintained, was hidden from her by his flapping hat brim, but whom she believed to be Thornton. Upon what had she founded her belief? Upon the matter of his being of about the size and form of the cowboy, upon the fact that he rode a sorrel horse and that his clothes, even to the grey neck handkerchief, were the same! How easy, how simple a matter for another man to have a sorrel horse and to wear clothes like Thornton's!
She remembered that the cowboy's surprise had seemed sincere and lively when she had told him she had seen him; she recalled his courtesy to her in the Harte cabin, his willingness to walk seven miles carrying his heavy saddle that she might have a night's rest under a roof with another woman. Not to be forgotten was the wrath in his eye and voice when she had come upon him with his limping horse, and now, at last she knew why his horse had been lamed and by whom! For that seemingly wanton cruelty had accomplished that which it was planned to do, making her certain beyond a doubt that Thornton had lied to her, that he had been the man whom she had seen following her, hence that he it was who had robbed her and had kissed her into the bargain.