“I saw her as I came along,” he said slowly. “She said she’d come after supper. She sent her love, and said she was going to bring a shirt-waist to get fixed.”
“The dear thing! It’s the one thing that makes my life here possible, Jim. I mean her friendship. She’s the only one in all the village that can forget things. I mean 408 among the women.” She came round the table and sat on its edge facing him, staring out of the window at the ruddy sunset with eyes that had suddenly become shadowed with regret. “Men aren’t like that, it seems to me. They’re fierce, and violent, and all that, but most of them have pretty big hearts when their anger is past.”
Jim’s eyes smiled whimsically.
“Do you think so?” he said. “Guess maybe I won’t contradict you, but it seems to me I’ve learned pretty well how large their hearts are––in the last two months.”
“You mean––you can get no work?”
The man nodded. But he had no bitterness now. He had learned his lesson from Peter Blunt. He had no blame for the weaknesses of human nature. Why should he have? Who was he to judge?
There was a silence for some moments. Eve continued to gaze at the sunset. The glorious ever-changing lights held her physical vision, but her mind was traveling in that realm of woman’s thought, whither no mere man can follow it.
It was Jim who spoke at last.
“But I didn’t come to––to air troubles,” he said thoughtfully. “I came to tell you of two things. One of ’em is Peter. He’s packing his wagon. He goes at sun-up to-morrow. He says he must move on––keep moving. He says all that held him to Barnriff is finished with, so now there’s nothing left but to hit the trail.”
“Poor old Peter!” Eve murmured softly. “I s’pose he means the gold business?”