She knew the folly of asking questions, but she noticed that the whisky was not touched.
She seemed to have been asleep only a few minutes when she felt him lean over and gently kiss her. She did not open her eyes until he was fully dressed in his ranch clothes.
"Don't worry," he muttered, seeing she was awake; and went out on tiptoe. Though it was broad daylight, no one was yet stirring about the hotel.
When she awakened later and realised how thoughtlessly in her weariness she had let him go without trying to wring from him his destination, she dressed hurriedly and went to the stables. Pink Eye was gone—Pink Eye, like his master, untirable. It made her thoughtful, and with thought came a sigh that deepened the lines about her eyes.
On Saturday he returned. He rode quietly into the stable yard, handed his horse to the ostler, and sought his room. He was clear-eyed, but heavy with fatigue. Without undressing he dropped to the bed and was asleep before Mary could draw the curtains.
Out in the stable Pink Eye was as weary as his master.
Mary Aikens went into the streets, and in the post office heard the latest gossip—a new case of cattle-thieving off toward Irvine. For hours she walked up and down the streets with a terrible ache at her heart.
That night her husband sent her to a show in the "opera house," while he broke loose up in the Toronto Street den and lined the pockets of the usual sharpers on the look-out for reckless fools. Through a wretched performance she sat without grasping even its general idea, miserable, lonely, trembling with indecision. On her return to the hotel she borrowed a railway time-table from the hotel clerk and took it to her room. For a long time she sat rocking, staring into space, her face pale, her little fists clenched in the fight she was making, and at last carried the time-table down unopened.
She hungered to get away from it all, to sink her streaming eyes in a mother's lap, to feel about her arms that sympathised without questioning. But her pride, and a curious feeling about Jim, kept her to the duty she had undertaken when she stood beside Jim Aikens at the altar.