Oh, yes, my lady was too desperate with grief to pass another night within the haunted scene of her calamities. She would be abducted at once before the man had time to change his mind. She would interrupt her packing with floods of tears, while she stowed her own goods and everything of mine which might be saleable—my best riata, my breaking curb, spare gun, and buffalo coat, even my father's watch, and my mother's ring which I had trusted to her especial care.
The man took her mare and the pack-horse out of the pasture, and close by the house door he loaded her baggage with a squaw hitch, unhandily, with such a trampling about as would suffice for a pack-train. Then across his blunderings came her dainty tracks out from the doorway to where he helped her mount. And they two had ridden southward, to camp on wet ground within five miles or so, where I could see a faint, reflected light against Skull Rock.
It is curious to remember how all my thoughts were evil as long as I stayed in my cabin, or tracked about the yard where the very air was fouled by a taint of misery, of morbid brooding, of outrageous wrong. Yet in the stable, where I passed that night, my thoughts were innocent, my prayers went straight up like smoke on windless air, and I was comforted.
In quite the best of tempers, I woke up from my sleep in the hay, bathed, breakfasted, brought in a horse from pasture, saddled and rode out.
Where I had seen the glow from their supper fire, my señora was in camp with her deliverer, beside the hollowed flank of old Skull Rock, which towered three hundred feet above their bed place. They were at breakfast, taken by surprise, with no chance of catching their horses to escape.
It made me catch my breath to see the dear, familiar scarlet serge, the morning sun aflame on his belt, as the man rose to face me: my friend, Red Saunders—that Cockney sailor-tramp who, ever so long ago, brought news of the Burrows girl in Winnipeg when he came to engage for the service. I bore no malice toward him for rescuing a woman in distress, no ill-will toward the señora for thinking my long absence meant desertion. I took off my hat, as one always must to a woman, dismounted, because one does not ride on ground where people are encamped, then turned to my friend with outstretched hand.
"Am I excused?" I asked.
But Red stood back with his hand to his holster.
"Violet," he said hoarsely, "get abaft thish yer rock."
"Die first," she answered, with a laugh of defiance, "it's you that's scairt, not me."