Now that he had asked her he still wondered. He was used to feel that no one could be really devout, and yet speak so freely. Why––he could not have told. But now he began to understand, yet it was but a beginning. Could it be that she belonged to no church? Was it some sect of which he had never heard to which they belonged? If so, it must be a true faith, or it never could have upheld them through all their wanderings and afflictions, and, as he pondered, he found himself filled with a measure of the 281 same trustful peace. During their flight across the plains together he had come to rest in them, and when his heart was too heavy to dare address the Deity in his own words, it was balm to his hurt spirit to hear them at their devotions as if thus God were drawn nearer him.
This time, whether he might lay it to their prayers or no, his hopes were fulfilled. The evening brought a clear sunset, and during the next day the snow melted and soon was gone, and a breeze sprang up and the clouds drifted away, and for several days thereafter the weather continued clear and dry.
Now often he brought his horse to the door, and lifted Amalia to the saddle and walked at her side, fearing she might rest her foot too firmly in the stirrup and so lose control of the horse in her pain. Always their way took them to the falls. And always he listened while Amalia talked. He allowed himself only the most meager liberty of expression. Distant and cold his manner often seemed to her, but intuitively she respected his moods, if moods they might be called: she suspected not.
CHAPTER XXII
THE BEAST ON THE TRAIL
A week after the first snowfall Larry Kildene returned. He had lingered long after he should have taken the trail and had gone farther than he had dreamed of going when he parted from his three companions on the mountain top. All day long the snow had been falling, and for the last few miles he had found it almost impossible to crawl upward. Fortunately there had been no wind, and the snow lay as it had fallen, covering the trail so completely that only Larry Kildene himself could have kept it––he and his horse––yet not impeding his progress with drifts to be tunneled through.
Harry King had been growing more and more uneasy during the day, and had kept the trail from the cabin to the turn of the cliff clear of snow, but below that point he did not think it wise to go: he could not, indeed. There, however, he stationed himself to wait through the night, and just beyond the turn he built a fire, thinking it might send a light into the darkness to greet Larry, should he happen to be toiling through the snow.
He did not arouse the fears of Amalia by telling her he meant to keep watch all night on the cliff, but he asked her for a brew of Larry Kildene’s coffee––of which they had been most sparing––when he left them after the evening meal, and it was given him without a thought, as he had been all day working in the snow, and the request seemed 283 natural. He asked that he might have it in the great kettle in which they prepared it, and carried it with him to the fodder shed.