“I've always been safe at the Hat Ranch, but if I should need a friend I can call on Harley P. He isn't one of the presuming kind”—Donna smiled—“but he will stand the acid.”
“And you will not worry if you do not receive any letters from me all the time I am away?”
“I shall know what to expect, Bob, so I shall not worry—very much.”
They left the Yosemite early next morning, staging down to El Portal, and shortly after dusk the same evening they arrived at San Pasqual. There were few people at the station when the train pulled in, and none that Donna knew, except the station agent and his assistants; and as these worthies were busy up at the baggage car, Bob and Donna alighted at the rear end and under the friendly cover of darkness made their way down to the Hat Ranch.
Sam Singer and Soft Wind had not yet retired, and after seeing his bride safe in her home once more, Bob McGraw prepared to leave her.
She was sorely tempted, at that final test of separation, to plead with him to abandon his journey, to stay with her and their new-found happiness and leave to another the gigantic task of reclaiming the valley. It was such a forlorn hope, after all; she began to question his right to stake their future against that of persons to whom he owed no allegiance, until she remembered that a great work must ever require great sacrifice; that her share in this sacrifice was little, indeed, compared with his. Moreover, he had set his face to this task before he had met her—she would not be worthy of him if she asked him to abandon it now.
“I must go” he said huskily. “The moon will be up by ten o'clock and I can make better time traveling by moonlight than I can after sun-up.”
She clung to him for one breathless second; then, with a final caress she sent him forth to battle for his Pagans.
She was back at the cashier's counter in the eating-house the next morning when Harley P. Hennage came in for his breakfast.
“Hello, Miss Donna” the unassuming one greeted her cordially. “Where've you been an' when did you get back to San Pasqual? Why, I like to 'a died o' grief. Thought you'd run away an' got married an' left us for good.”