“Will you be comin’ home with me, gel?” asked Pierre hurriedly.
She looked at him, her lips apart, and she shook her head.
Maud’s voice screamed at her from the kitchen door. Pierre let her go. She went on, very white.
She did not sleep at all that night. Her father’s face, Pierre’s face, looked at her. In the morning Pierre would be gone. She had heard Maud say that the “queer Landis feller would be makin’ tracks back to that ranch of his acrost the river.” Yes, he would be gone. She might have been going with him. She felt the urgent pressure of his hand on her arm, in her heart. It shook her with such a longing for love, for all the unknown largesse of love, that she cried. The next morning, pale, she came down and went about her work. Pierre was not at breakfast, and she felt a sinking of heart, though she had not known that she had built upon seeing him again. Then, as she stepped out at the back to empty a bucket, there he was!
Not even the beauty of dawn could lend mystery to the hideous, littered yard, untidy as the yards of frontier towns invariably are, to the board fence, to the trampled half-acre of dirt, known as “The Square,” and to the ugly frame buildings straggled about it; but it could and did give an unearthly look of blessedness to the bare, gray-brown buttes that ringed the town and a glory to the sky, while upon Pierre, waiting at his pony’s head, it shed a magical and tender light. He was dressed in his cowboy’s best, a white silk handkerchief knotted under his chin, leather “chaps,” bright spurs, a sombrero on his head. His face was grave, excited, wistful. At sight of Joan, he moved forward, the pony trailing after him at the full length of its reins; and, stopping before her, Pierre took off the sombrero, slowly stripped the gauntlet from his right hand, and, pressing both hat and glove against his hip with the left hand, held out the free, clean palm to Joan.
“Good-bye,” said he, “unless—you’ll be comin’ with me after all?”
Joan felt again that rush of fire to her brows. She took his hand and her fingers closed around it like the frightened, lonely fingers of a little girl. She came near to him and looked up.
“I’ll be comin’ with you, Pierre,” she said, just above her breath.
He shot up a full inch, stiffened, searched her with smouldering eyes, then held her hard against him. “You’ll not be sorry, Joan Carver,” said he gently and put her away from him. Then, unsmiling, he bade her go in and get her belongings while he got her a horse and told his news to Mrs. Upper.
That ride was dreamlike to Joan. Pierre put her in her saddle and she rode after him across the Square and along a road flanked by the ugly houses of the town.