Presently the odour of the cooking venison beat its way to his brain and he lifted his head from his chest. He saw then the flowers in the old tomato and butter tins, the Indian blanket hanging from the table, the fresh spruce boughs of their bed; and his neglect was to him akin to sacrilege. Rising, he made for the door and the darkness beyond.
Without turning she saw him leave, and in part she understood.
He was suffering—Blue Pete was suffering these days in mind as never in body. The accumulation of the intense longings since she had been torn from him down in the Hills to serve her sentence for rustling was struggling with other hopes and fears; and the fight was rending. Until only a few days ago he had been heading with certain and speedy success for the day when Mira might return with head held high to the 3-bar-Y, her own ranch. Only his guilt intervened, for she had already paid the penalty of her own rustling. It was the knowledge that she would never return without him that made the aim such a sacred one. To free her he must clear himself with the Police. And that could be only when every horse with whose stealing he had been connected was returned to its rightful owner. In his simplicity he imagined the law would be satisfied then.
So near had been the attainment of his one great ambition that his head sometimes whirled. Only two horses yet to recover! Then so many things had happened.
Throughout his engagement as a common bohunk Blue Pete had been happily unconscious of the embarrassing forces working subtly within him to thrust to the background his own redemption. He only knew he was uncomfortable, that strange processes were cropping to the surface in his once firmly fixed mind. It seemed treason to Mira—Mira, for whom everything was done—to delay a task so simple.
Yet he could not take the last two horses that alone, he imagined, stood between him and freedom, and relieve himself of new responsibilities.
Doubly miserable, he sank on the needle-strewn sand and sighed.
"Pete!"
Mira's gentle voice came to him through the darkness, filled with trembling entreaty. Conscience-stricken, he hurried back to the cave. She met him at the edge of the candle light and took his hand.
"Can't you tell me about it, Pete?"