It seemed to be getting dimmer and dimmer in the sala. Honor found herself wishing with all her heart for her stepfather. Stephen Lorimer would know how to answer; how to parry,—to combat this thing. She felt her own weapons clumsy and blunt, but such as they were she would use them.
"But it isn't coming ever again, Carter! I tell you it isn't coming! And I want you to stop saying and thinking that it is! Now I'm going to Jimsy!"
In the wide out-of-doors, under the unbelievably blue sky and the stinging sun, with Jimsy and Yaqui Juan, life was sound and whole again. The Indian, tall as a pine, looked at her with eyes of respectful adoration and smiled his slow, melancholy smile, as she swung off with the boy, down the path which led to the old well.
"Juan approves of me, doesn't he?" said Honor, contentedly.
"Of course; you're my woman!" She loved his happy impudence. "Aren't you, Skipper?" They had passed the twist in the path—the path which was like a moist green tunnel through the tropic jungle—which hid them from the house and she halted and went swiftly into his arms.
"Yes, Jimsy! Yes! And—I've been stingy and mean to you but I won't be, any more. Carter must just—stand things."
"Skipper!" He wasn't facile with words, Jimsy King, but he was able to make himself clear.
"Jimsy, isn't it wonderful—the all-rightness of everything? Being together again, and——"
"Going to be together always! And my job waiting! Isn't the old boy a wonder? I saw him, just now. He says he's heard from Mexico City and it's O. K. to start Thursday. They're going to send the escort."
"In two days," said Honor, blissfully, "we'll be on our way home! Jimsy, in two days!"