In due time her answer came. He carried her letter out to a favourite haunt of his in a sunny coolie where an old creek-bed was marked by straggling willows, and there, throwing himself down upon the sloping grass, he read her message.
"I know, dear, how much that last sentence of yours cost you, and my answer is that were your duty less to you, you would be less to me. How could I honour and love a man who, for the sake of a girl or for any sake, would turn back from his work? Besides, you have taught me too well to love your glorious West, and you cannot daunt me now by any such sombre picture as you drew for me in your last letter. No sir. The West for me! And you should be ashamed—and this I shall make you properly repent—ashamed to force me to the unmaidenly course of insisting upon going out to you, 'rounding you up into a corral'—that is the correct phrase, is it not?—and noosing, no, roping you there."
When he looked up from the letter the landscape was blurred for a time. But soon he wondered at the new splendour of the day, the sweetness of the air, the mellow music of the meadow-lark. A new glory was upon sky and earth and a new rapture in his heart.
"Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "Dear little soul! She doesn't know, and yet, even if she did, I believe it would make no difference."
Experience proved that he had rightly estimated her. For a year and a half she had stood by her husband's side, making sunshine for him that no clouds could dim nor blizzards blow out. It was this that threw into her husband's tone as he said, "My wife, Mr. Macgregor," the tenderness and pride. It made Shock's heart quiver, for there came to him the picture of a tall girl with wonderful dark grey eyes that looked straight into his while she said, "You know I will not forget." It was this that made him hold the little woman's hand till she wondered at him, but with a woman's divining she read his story in the deep blue eyes, alight now with the memory of love.
"That light is not for me," she said to herself, and welcomed him with a welcome of one who had been so recently and, indeed, was still a lover.
The interval between supper and bed-time was spent in eager talk over Shock's field. A rough map, showing trails, streams, sloughs, coolies, and some of the larger ranches lay before them on the table.
"This is The Fort," said McIntyre, putting his finger upon a dot on the left side of the map. "Twenty-five miles west and south is Loon Lake, the centre of your field, where it is best that you should live, if you can; and then further away up toward the Pass they tell me there is a queer kind of ungodly settlement—ranchers, freighters, whisky-runners, cattle thieves, miners, almost anything you can name. You'll have to do some exploration work there."
"Prospecting, eh?" said Shock.
"Exactly. Prospecting is the word," said McIntyre. "The Fort end of your field won't be bad in one way. You'll find the people quite civilised. Indeed, The Fort is quite the social centre for the whole district. Afternoon teas, hunts, tennis, card-parties, and dancing parties make life one gay whirl for them. Mind you, I'm not saying a word against them. In this country anything clean in the way of sport ought to be encouraged, but unfortunately there is a broad, bad streak running through that crowd, and what with poker, gambling, bad whisky, and that sort of thing, the place is at times a perfect hell."