Joan nodded without removing her eyes from the face she loved so well. Then after a pause she went on—
“You think—he’s dead?”
Buck was some time before he answered her. His grave eyes were fixed on a spot across the water, where a break in the charred remains of the forest revealed a sky-line of green grass.
“How else?” he said, at last. “He was behind me with your aunt. He was on the hill. You’ve scoured what remains of the plateau. Wal, he ain’t there, an’ he didn’t come down the path wher’ we come. We ain’t see ’em anyways. Yep,” he went on, with a sigh, “guess the Padre’s dead, an’ one o’ them rocks down ther’ is markin’ his grave. Seems queer. He went with her. She was the woman he had loved. They’ve gone together, even though she just—hated him. He was a good man an’—he’d got grit. He was the best man in the world an’—an’ my big friend.”
His voice was husky with emotion, and something like a sob came with his last word, and Joan’s eyes filled with tears of sympathy and regret.
“Tell me,” he went on, after a pause. “I ain’t got it right. The fall knocked you plumb out. An’ then?”
His eyes were still on the distant break of the trees.
“I don’t know what happened,” Joan said wearily, spreading out her drenched skirt to the now blazing sun. “I know I woke up quite suddenly, feeling so cold that even my teeth were chattering. The rain was falling like—like hailstones. It was dark, so dark, and I was terribly afraid. I called to you, but got no answer, and—and I thought I was alone. It was terrible. The thunder had ceased, and the lightning was no longer playing. There was no longer any forest fire, or—or earthquakings. All was still and black, and the rain—oh, it was dreadful. I sat where I was, calling you at intervals. I sat on, and on, and on, till I thought the dark would never go, that day would never break again, and I began to think that all the world had come to an end, and I, alone, was left. Then at last the rain stopped, and I saw that day was breaking. But it was not until broad daylight that I knew where I was. And then—and then I saw you lying close at my feet. Oh, Buck, don’t let me think of it any more. Don’t remind me of it. It was awful. I believed you were dead—dead. And it seemed to me that my heart died, too. It was so dreadful that I think I—I was mad. And then—you saved me—again.”
Buck raised a stiff arm and gently drew her toward him with a wonderfully protecting movement. The girl yielded herself to him, and he kissed her sweet upturned lips.