"I won't keep you more than a moment," he said. "I'm leaving. And I'm leaving with nothing of yours. I've already taken too much. If I live to be a hundred, I'll never forgive myself for taking your charity these twenty-four years. For what you've spent maybe I can pay you back one of these days, in money. But for all the time and—patience—you've spent on me I can never repay you. I know that. At least, here's where I stop piling up a debt. These clothes and this gun come out of the money I made punching cows last year. Outside I've got El Sangre saddled with a saddle I bought out of the same money. They're my start in life, the clothes I've got on and the gun and the horse and the saddle. So I'm starting clean—Miss Cornish!"
Vance saw his sister wince under that name from the lips of Terry. But she did not speak.
"There'll be no return," said Terence sadly. "My trail is an out trail.
Good-by again." And so he was gone.
CHAPTER 17
Down the Bear Creek road Terence Hollis rode as he had never ridden before. To be sure, it was not the first time that El Sangre had stretched to the full his mighty strength, but on those other occasions he had fought the burst of speed, straining back in groaning stirrup leathers, with his full weight wresting at the bit. Now he let the rein play to such a point that he was barely keeping the power of the stallion in touch. He lightened his weight as only a fine horseman can do, shifting a few vital inches forward, and with the burden falling more over his withers, El Sangre fled like a racer down the valley. Not that he was fully extended. His head was not stretched out as a cow-pony's head is stretched when he runs; he held it rather high, as though he carried in his big heart a reserve strength ready to be called on for any emergency. For all that, it was running such as Terry had never known.
The wind became a blast, jerking the brim of his sombrero up and whistling in his hair. He was letting the shame, the grief, the thousand regrets of that parting with Aunt Elizabeth be blown out of his soul. His mind was a whirl; the thoughts became blurs. As a matter of fact, Terry was being reborn.
He had lived a life perfectly sheltered. The care of Elizabeth Cornish had surrounded him as the Blue Mountains and Sleep Mountain surrounded Bear Valley and fenced off the full power of the storm winds. The reality of life had never reached him. Now, all in a day, the burden was placed on his back, and he felt the spur driven home to the quick. No wonder that he winced, that his heart contracted.
But now that he was awakening, everything was new. Uncle Vance, whom he had always secretly despised, now seemed a fine character, gentle, cultured, thoughtful of others. Aunt Elizabeth Cornish he had accepted as a sort of natural fact, as though there were a blood tie between them. Now he was suddenly aware of twenty-four years of patient love. The sorrow of it, that only the loss of that love should have brought him realization of it. Vague thoughts and aspirations formed in his mind. He yearned toward some large and heroic deed which should re-establish himself in her respect. He wished to find her in need, in great trouble, free her from some crushing burden with one perilous effort, lay his homage at her feet.
All of which meant that Terry Hollis was a boy—a bewildered, heart- stricken boy. Not that he would have undone what he had done. It seemed to him inevitable that he should resent the story of the sheriff and shoot him down or be shot down himself. All that he regretted was that he had remained mute before Aunt Elizabeth, unable to explain to her a thing which he felt so keenly. And for the first time he realized the flinty basis of her nature. The same thing that enabled her to give half a lifetime to the cherishing of a theory, also enabled her to cast all the result of that labor out of her life. It stung him again to the quick every time he thought of it. There was something wrong. He felt that a hundred hands of affection gave him hold on her. And yet all those grips were brushed away.
The torment was setting him on fire. And the fire was burning away the smug complacency which had come to him during his long life in the valley.