"And they haven't showed up?"
"Naw."
No more questions were asked, and the guard betook himself to his pipe and enjoyment of the warm room, for intense cold had followed in the wake of the snow.
And the prisoner? The man on watch eyed dubiously the dark face as it lounged on the bunk. Aroused and refreshed by rest, he drifted away from the remembrance of his prison by living over with tender eyes the victory of the night before. Once he had seen it was possible for her to care for him—that once of a year ago, before she knew what he was; but lately—well, he thought her a plucky, cool-headed girl, who wouldn't go back on a friend, and her stanchness had shown that; but the very frank and outspoken showing had taken from him any hope of the warmer feeling that had existed in the old days, when she had likened him to a Launcelot in buckskin. The hope? His teeth set viciously as he thought of it as a hope. What right had he for such a wish? What right had he to let go of himself as he had done, and show her how his life was bound up in hers? What a hopeless tangle it was; and if she cared for him, it meant plainly enough that he was to repay her by communicating its hopelessness to her.
If she cared! In the prosaic light of day he even attempted to tell himself that the victory of the night might have been in part a delusion; that she had pitied him and the passion she had raised, and so had stooped from the saddle. Might it not have been only that? His reason told him—perhaps; and then all the wild unreason in the man turned rebel, and the force of a tumultuous instinct arose and took possession of him—of her, for it gave her again into his arms, and the laws of people were as nothing. She was his by her own gift; the rest of the world was blotted out.
CHAPTER III.
"THE SQUAW WHO RIDES."
At the ranch a strange cloak of silence hung around the household in regard to the horse-stealing. The men, hearing of the night raid, had endeavored to keep it from the women for fear of giving them uneasiness, but had not altogether succeeded. Jim had frustrated that attempt by forgetting, and blurting out at the dinner table something about Genesee's arrest.
"It isn't true; it can't be true!" and Rachel turned with such an appeal in her tired eyes that Andrews dropped his own.