Mary learned of the disclosure in a few minutes, and followed Beulah upstairs.
"You poor child!" she said, as she overtook her daughter.
"It's not me," she shot back. "It's Jim. He must be saved, some way.
It's impossible to think—I won't think it, no matter what they say!
Let them find what they like!…But he's in a hole, and we've got to
get him out."
The mother shook her head with some recollection of the blindness of love. And yet her own heart refused to accept any idea of guilt on the part of Travers.
"I want to be alone, mother," said Beulah. "I want to be alone, to think. I'm going down by the river."
As she strode rapidly through the paths in the cotton-woods the girl gradually became conscious of one dominating impulse in her maze of emotions. She must see Jim. She must see him at once. She must see him alone. There were things to be said that needed—that admitted—no witness. She knew that. Arthurs or one of the men would willingly ride to town for her, or with her, but this was a task for her alone. They must know nothing until it was over.
Outwardly calm, but inwardly burning with, impatience, she returned to the house and went through the form of eating supper. Then she dallied through the evening, giving her attention to Allan until all the household, except her mother, had gone to bed.
"I will watch with Allan to-night," her mother said. "You need rest more than I do. Lie down in my room and try to get some sleep."
Her mother kissed her, and Beulah went to her room. But not to sleep. When silence filled all the house she slipped gently down the stairs, through the front yard, and into the corral. Fortunately her horse had been stabled. She harnessed him with some difficulty in the darkness, and threw herself into the saddle. For a hundred yards she walked him; then she drew him off the hard road on to the grass and loosed him into a trot. Half a mile from the house she was swinging at a hard gallop down the dark valley. The soft night wind pressed its caresses on her flushed cheek, but her heart beat fast with excitement and impatience, and she galloped the foaming horse to the limit of his speed. More than once even the sure-footed ranger almost fell over the treacherous badger-holes, but she had learned to ride like the saddle itself, and she merely tightened the rein and urged him faster.
Two hours of such violence were a safety-valve to her emotions, and both horse and rider were content to enter the little town at a walk. Here and there a coal-oil lamp shed its cube of yellow light through an unblinded window, but the streets were deserted and in utter darkness. She had now reached the point at which her general plan to see Travers must be worked out into detail, and she allowed the horse his time as she turned the matter over in her mind. She had no doubt that if she found Sergeant Grey he would permit an interview, but she shrank from making the request. She might do so as a last resort; but if possible she meant to seek out her lover—for so she thought of him—for herself. She knew that the jails in the smaller towns were crude affairs, where the prisoner was locked up and usually left without a guard. The first thing was to find the jail.