We thanked Brook, and he saluted and rode away, his red tunic slowly fading out of view in the cloud of dust which his horse kicked up from the bone-dry trail.
"Very decent chap, Brook," said Jack, after a while, and I said "Yes."
It was with a strange pounding of the heart that we at last discerned the outlines of the shacks of our little settlement. Mrs. Alton's came first into view, then Spoof's, then, together, the buildings on Fourteen and Twenty-two. A gust of homesickness swept up and took sudden possession of me, and I realized for the first time how much I had become attached to the little square on the thousand-mile fabric of the prairies which I had already learned to think of as home. Gaunt and bare they may be, but the prairies have a way of winding themselves about the heart with bands that are stronger than steel.
If we had been anxious, we were eager, too; eager with the news of our successful season's work; with anticipation of the bright faces which would greet the roll of crisp new bank bills that Jack carried in an inside vest pocket; eager to display the load of provisions and supplies which had been bought with part of our earnings.
We must have been fully a mile from the houses when we discerned the first evidences of life. A little figure darted out of the shack on Twenty-two to the edge of the gully; then for a few minutes sank from sight; then reappeared on our side of the stream and rushed into the shack on Fourteen. Almost instantly two figures appeared at the door; paused for a moment, then swooped like wild things down the trail toward us. And we stood up on the top of the wagon and waved our hats and yelled like mad, until even Spoof down on section Two must have heard us. And old Buck and Bright, their phlegmatic souls at last awakened by that strange power that lies at the root of all creation and which is friendship and love and all the shadings of affection which lie between — or perhaps it was by the smell of the haystack at their own stables—joined in the spirit of the occasion and broke forth in a most surprising gallop, their hoofs click-clacking and their trace-chains lashing the whiffle-trees as they ran.
Soon we came up, and there were the girls, wonderful, lithe, sunburned, radiant, hatless, golden hair streaming in the golden light at the end of day, arms extended, white teeth gleaming, measureless, ineffable, in the beauty and wonder of their young womanhood! We sprang from the wagon and—I don't know how it happened—Jean ran straight into my arms. Not Marjorie—I didn't see what became of her—I didn't stop to look;—Jean ran straight into my arms! I held her there, held her with the strength of ten weeks' harvesting in my muscles and of all my young hot boyhood in my veins; held her and kissed her and would not let her go. . . For the first time since we had been little children together, playing by the dam where the water-wheel across the river tossed its dancing diamonds in the air, I held her and kissed her and would not let her go.
Across the fields of crisp and brittle grass we trudged together, disregarding the trail and the measureless swoon of that sunset world as we swept homeward on the flood-tide of our happiness. Her firm little arm pressed tight against mine and our limbs swung together in the rhythm of our stride. And when I looked down in her face I saw a light that was not altogether the glint of the setting sun.
But in that most poetic moment of her life Jean forgot to be poetic. Once more she slipped her arm about me.
"Gee, it's good to have you home again," she said.
And in what should have been my supreme hour I found myself wondering whether Jean's passion was love or just plain loneliness.