However, it was plainly his duty to prevent an unprotected rendezvous with Lorimer, to reason, to plead, and, if he should fail to bring her to a reasonable frame of mind, to go with her, come what would of the result. There were reasons innumerable why he, a cattle-man, should avoid the appearance of dealing with the sheep faction, he reflected, grimly. Lorimer owned sheep, many thousand head. His herds had been allowed to graze unmolested, while smaller owners, like Jim Rodney, had been crowded out because his influence, politically, was a thing to be reckoned with. So Peter followed Judith, pleading Judith’s cause; she did not understand, he told her, what she was doing; and while perhaps there was not another man in the country who would not honor her unselfishness in coming to him, Lorimer’s chivalry was not a thing to be reckoned with, drunken beast that he was. And Judith, worn with the struggle, tried beyond measure, made reckless by the daily infusion of ill-fortune, pulled up the mare and laughed unpleasantly.
“You think I’m going to see Lorimer about Jim? I’m going with him to a merrymaking. We’re old pals, Lorimer and I.”
“Judith, dear, has it come to this, that you not only distrust an old friend, but that you try to degrade yourself to hide from him the fact that you are going to your brother’s? You’ve never spoken to Lorimer. I heard him say, not a week ago, that he had never succeeded in making you recognize him. You deceived me at first when you spoke of meeting him—I thought you had a message from Jim—but this talk of merrymaking is beneath you.” He shrugged his shoulders in disgust. He felt the torrent of grief that rent her. No sob escaped her lips; there was no convulsive movement of shoulder. She rode beside him, still as the desert before the sand-storm breaks, her soul seared with white-hot iron that knows no saving grace of sob or tear. She rode as Boadicea might have ridden to battle; there was not a yielding line in her body. But over and over in her woman’s heart there rang the cry: “I am so tired! If the long night would but come!”
Peter drew out his watch. “It’s a quarter to eleven. We’ll have a hard bit of riding to reach Blind Creek before midnight.”
Then he knew as well as she, perhaps better, the route to Jim’s hiding-place; she had never been there as yet. And if Peter knew, doubtless every cattle-man in the country knew. What a fool she had been with her talk of meeting Tom Lorimer! A sense of utter defeat seemed to paralyze her energies. She felt like a trapped thing that after eluding its pursuers again and again finds that it has been but running about a corral. Physical weariness was telling on her. She had been in the saddle since a little past noon and it was now not far from midnight. And still there was the unanswered question of Peter’s errand. It was long since either had broken the silence. A delicious coolness had crept into the air with the approach of midnight. Judith, breathing deep draughts of it, reminded herself of the stoicism that was hers by birthright.
“Peter”—her voice lost some of its old ring, but it had a deeper note—“Peter, we make strange comrades, you and I, in a stranger world. We meet on Horse-Thief Trail, and there is reason to suppose that our errands are inimical. You’ve pierced all my little pretences; you know that I am going to my brother, who is an outlaw—my brother, the rope for whose hanging is already cut. And yet we have been friends these many years, and we meet in this world of desolation and weigh each other’s words, and there is no trust in our hearts. Our little faith is more pitiful than the cruel errands that bring us. I take it you, too, are going to my brother’s?”
“I’m going there to see that you arrive safe and sound, but I had no intention of going when I left camp. You’ve brought me a good twenty miles out of my way, not to mention accusing me of ulterior motives. Now, aren’t you penitent?” He smiled at her, boyish and irresistible. To Judith it was more reassuring than an oath. “It’s like dogs fighting over a picked bone; the meat’s all gone. The range is overworked; it needs a good, long rest.” He turned towards Judith, speaking slowly. “What you have said is true. We’re friends before we’re partisans of either faction. I’m on my way to a round-up. There’s been an unexpected order to fill a beef contract—a thousand steers. We’re going to furnish five hundred, the XXX two hundred and fifty, and the “Circle-Star” two hundred and fifty. Men have been scouring the enemy’s country for days rounding up stragglers. It will go hard with the rustlers after this round-up, Judith.”
She felt a great wave of penitence and shame sweep over her. She had not trusted him; in her heart she had nourished hideous suspicions of him, and he was telling her, quite simply, of the plans of his own faction, trusting her, as, indeed, he might, but as she never expected to be trusted.
“Peter, do you know that sometimes I think Jim has gone quite mad with these range troubles. He’s acted strangely ever since his sheep were driven over the cliff. He’s not been home to Alida and the children since he has been out of jail, and you know how devoted to them he has always been! He spends all his time tracking Simpson. Alida wrote me that she expects him to-night, and I’m going there on the chance.”
“It’s the devil’s own hole for desolation that he’s come to.” Peter looked about the cup-shaped valley that was but a cul-de-sac in the mountains. Its approach was between the high rock walls of a cañon. Passing between them, the rise of temperature was almost incredible. The great barrier of mountain-range, that cut it off from the rest of the world, seemed also to cut it off from light and air. The atmosphere hung lifeless, the occasional bellow of range-cattle sounded far-off and muffled. Vegetation was scant, the sage-brush grew close and scrubby, even the brilliant cactus flowers seemed to have abandoned the valley to its fate. A lone group of dead cotton-woods grew like sentinels close to the rocky walls. Their twisted branches, gaunt and bare, writhed upward as if in dumb supplication. There was about them a something that made Judith come closer to Peter as they passed them by. The night wind sang in their leafless branches with a long-drawn, shuddering sigh. The despair of a barren, deserted thing seemed to have settled on them.