“I—I—” He seemed to make a sudden decision. “I wasn’t going to tell you, Beth, till I was sure.” He met her searching gaze squarely. “I think I’ve struck it, Beth—over there on Cedar Creek. It looks good—pans richer than anything around the Gulch. I wanted to get it recorded in Vailstown tonight. Then, if everything was all right, I was going to phone you.”
His face was flushed and eager now, and very boyish. She leaned forward and kissed him.
“I’m so glad. Tom. At last—you deserve it. You’ve worked hard.”
“I think I’ve got it, Beth—got it for you, just like I said I would.”
Beth rose, and went to the window. “Its clouding over,” she said. “We’ll have snow by morning.”
She came back to the fireside, and glancing at his bandaged ankle, smiled. “You’ll have to stay here tonight. In the morning I’ll walk over to Simpson’s—it’s only three miles back around Sugar Loaf—and get you a horse. You can make it to Vailstown then.”
A faint, distant sound outside made them look at each other in sudden alarm. They listened. It grew louder—a horse coming along the trail from Rocky Gulch at a gallop. Beth thought of her stepfather, perhaps returning unexpectedly—to find Tom here with her. In the silence she could hear again the lonely howl of the wolf on Sugar Loaf—a sound immeasurably mournful, very much like the desolate, silent mountains themselves.
She rose to her feet, trembling. The sound of the horseman approaching grew steadily louder. Then her glance fell upon the little tin clock over the fireplace. She smiled with the relief of sudden comprehension.
“Nine o’clock, Tom. I’d forgotten. It’s only the mail rider for Vailstown.”
She went to the window. “It’s snowing, Tom,” she added.