“To keep us from telling what we knew regarding a certain crime, in which either he, or some of his intimate friends, were deeply interested.”
“But it would all come out at the trial, wouldn't it?”
“There was to be no trial; Judge Lynch settles the majority of such cases out here at present. It is extremely simple. Listen, and I will tell you the story.”
He reviewed briefly those occurrences leading directly up to his arrest, saying little regarding the horrors of that scene witnessed near the Cimmaron Crossing, but making sufficiently clear his very slight connection with it, and the reason those who were guilty of the crime were so anxious to get him out of the way. She listened intently, asking few questions, until he ended. Then they both looked up, conscious that dawn was becoming gray in the east. Keith's first thought was one of relief—the brightening sky showed him they were riding straight north.
Chapter XIII. The Ford of the Arkansas
They were still in the midst of the yellow featureless plain, but the weary horses had slowed down to a walk, the heavy sand retarding progress. It was a gloomy, depressing scene in the spectral gray light, a wide circle of intense loneliness, unbroken by either dwarfed shrub or bunch of grass, a barren expanse stretching to the sky. Vague cloud shadows seemed to flit across the level surface, assuming fantastic shapes, but all of the same dull coloring, imperfect and unfinished. Nothing seemed tangible or real, but rather some grotesque picture of delirium, ever merging into another yet more hideous. The very silence of those surrounding wastes seemed burdensome, adding immeasurably to the horror. They were but specks crawling underneath the sky—the only living, moving objects in all that immense circle of desolation and death.
Keith turned in the saddle, looking back past Neb—who swayed in his seat, with head lolling on his breast as though asleep, his horse plodding after the others—along the slight trail they had made across the desert. So far as eye could reach nothing moved, nothing apparently existed. Fronting again to the north he looked upon the same grim barrenness, only that far off, against the lighter background of distant sky, there was visible a faint blur, a bluish haze, which he believed to be the distant sand dunes bordering the Arkansas. The intense dreariness of it all left a feeling of depression. His eyes turned and regarded the girl riding silently beside him. The same look of depression was visible upon her face, and she was gazing off into the dull distance with lack-lustre eyes, her slender form leaning forward, her hands clasped across the pommel. The long weariness of the night had left traces on her young face, robbing it of some of its freshness, yet Keith found it more attractive in the growing daylight than amid the lamp shadows of the evening before. He had not previously realized the peculiar clearness of her complexion, the rose tint showing through the olive skin, or the soft and silky fineness of her hair, which, disarranged, was strangely becoming under the broad brim of the hat she wore, drawn low until it shadowed her eyes. It was not a face to be easily associated with frontier concert halls, or any surrender to evil; the chin round and firm, the lips full, yet sufficiently compressed; the whole expression that of pure and dignified womanhood. She puzzled him, and he scarcely knew what to believe, or exactly how to act toward her.
“Our friends back yonder should be turning out from the corral by now,” he said finally, anxious to break the silence, for she had not spoken since he ended his tale. “It will not be long until they discover Hawley's predicament, and perhaps the welkin already rings with profanity. That may even account for the blue haze out yonder.”
She turned her eyes toward him, and the slightest trace of a smile appeared from out the depths of their weariness.