Would I? I was longing to slip into my home before I ran the gantlet of all the streets opening on the Santa Fé Trail. I never did know what Dever's "errant" was, that led him to swing some miles to the west, out of the way to the ford of the Neosho above the old stone cabin where Father Le Claire swam his horse in the May flood six years before. He gave no reason for the act that brought me over a road, every foot sacred to the happiest moments of my life. Past the big cottonwood, down into the West Draw where the pink blossoms called in sweet insistent tones to me to remember a day when I had crowned a little girl with blooms like these, a day when my life was in its Maytime joy. On across the prairie we swung to the very borders of Springvale, which was nestling by the river and stretching up the hillslope toward where the bluff breaks abruptly. I could see "Rockport" gray and sun-flecked beyond its sheltering line of green bushes.
Just as we turned toward Cliff Street Dever said carelessly,
"Lots of changes some ways sence I took you out of here last August. Judson, he's married two months ago."
The warm sunny glorious world turned drab and cold to me with the words.
"What's the matter, Baronet?—you're whiter'n a dead man!"
"Just a little faint. Got that way in the army," I answered, which was a lie.
"Better now? As I was sayin', Judson and Lettie has been married two months now. Kinder surprised folks by jinin' up sudden; but—oh, well, it's a lot better quick than not at all sometimes."
I caught my breath. My "spell" contracted in the army was passing. And here were Cliff Street and the round turret-like corners of Judge Baronet's stone-built domicile. It was high noon, and my father had just gone into the house. I gave Dever his fare and made the hall door at a leap. My father turned at the sound and—I was in his arms. Then came Aunt Candace, older by more than ten months. Oh, the women are the ones who suffer most. I had not thought until that moment what all this winter of absence meant to Candace Baronet. I held her in my strong arms and looked down into her love-hungry eyes. Men are such stupid unfeeling brutes. I am, at least; for I had never read in this dear woman's face until that instant what must have been written there all these years,—the love that might have been given to a husband and children of her own, this lonely, childless woman had given to me.
"Aunty, I'll never leave you again," I declared, as she clung to me, and patted my cheeks and stroked my rough curly hair.
We sat down together to the midday meal, and my father's blessing was like the benediction of Heaven to my ears.