"I have not been loyal," she whispered over and over to herself accusingly. "I have not been a true friend. I have suspected and I know, oh, I know so well, that it can't be! He wouldn't do a thing like that, he couldn't!"
She topped the ridge, sped on for half a mile upon its crest, racing straight toward the east, dropped down into another valley ten times bigger than the one she had just quitted, and still following the trail headed southward again. Here there were fewer trees, a sprinkling of pine and fir, and wider open spaces. Another stream, even smaller than Echo Creek, watered the valley. She rode through a small herd of saddle horses that flashed away before her swift approach, their manes and tails flying, and scarcely realised that she had disturbed them. Off to her left, at the upper end of the valley where were a number of grazing cattle, she thought she could distinguish the figures of a couple of her father's cowboys riding herd. But she did not turn to them.
Gypsy, warming to the race, carried her mistress valiantly the half a dozen miles from the ridge she had crossed to the knoll crowned with great boled, sky seeking cedars where her father's ranch house stood. Half a mile away the girl made out the wide verandahs, the long flight of steps, the hammock where she had read and dozed last night, yes, and dreamed the tender, half wistful, yet rose tinted dreams of maidenhood. She saw, too, the stables at the base of the knoll, to the northward, where one of the boys, Charlie or Jim, was harnessing the greys, preparatory to hitching them to the big wagon. The thought flashed through her mind that he counted upon going out for a load of wood, and that he would be called upon first to bring in another burden that he would never forget.
Her eyes went back to the house. There was some one sitting in a rocker in the shade near the front door. It was her mother. This news would be a bitter, bitter shock to the tender-hearted woman who had called Arthur Shandon one of her "boys."
The girl drew nearer, with no tightening of reins upon Gypsy's headlong speed. Another glimpse through the cedars showed her that there was some one with her mother, a man, broad and heavy shouldered. He turned, hearing the pound of the flying hoofs through the still air as she came on. It was her father. She could see the massive, calm face, the white hair and white square beard.
She was barely five hundred yards from the foot of the knoll when she saw that her father and mother were not alone. The third figure had been concealed from her until now by the great post standing at the top of the steps. But now the man sitting there rose to his feet and turned to look in the direction her parents were looking. A sudden choking came into the girl's throat, a quick rush of tears into her dry eyes. She drew her reins tight, bringing her pony down into a trot, then to a walk. She could not rush on like this, carrying a message of grief and terror; must she hasten so eagerly to speak the word that was going to make life so different to this man?
"Oh, how can I tell him?" she was moaning. "The gladdest, gayest, happiest boy of a man that ever lived! Will he ever be glad again?"
Her mother had waved to her, her father was smiling, proud of her as he always was when he saw how she rode. And the other man who had leaped to his feet was running down the steps, coming to meet her, coming to meet the news she brought.