He put silence to flight by getting to his feet. "I must stand watch by midnight. A week will bring me back again. We'll say good night here. Good night."
"Good night, Jim. Seven days are flying towards me on damaged wings."
"Good night again, girl. Let your blessings follow me while I am away."
CHAPTER VII The Return to Surprise
The week was beggared, and had borrowed two days from the next, when Power came riding back to Surprise. He had left the musterers and the cook's waggon after breakfast to find their own way home, and a steady walk all day across the plain brought him at evening to the bottom of the long slope of Dingo Gap, and a bare half-dozen miles from Surprise. Man and beast had made small matter of the journey.
Power came back in better cheer. Reflection stays at the fireside when a man rides off at the heels of a mob of cattle, and Power came home with only the recollections of a summer madness to flick his memory. A mile of difficult travelling hid him from the crossways, and who denies Fate sits there sometimes pointing the path to follow?
Half-way up the distance, where the road swings back upon itself, and a hurly-burly of rocks shuts the sight from climbing farther, where it takes a good man to steer a buggy—there, I say to you, Power met Moll Gregory, astride a shabby horse, face to face. She was going down and he was going up, and they must halt their horses to divide the way.
At once the old sickness returned. Leech, thou hast tinkered with thine ointments, bring now the knife to heal. The beast was knock-kneed and at odds with age, with a moulding saddle across its back and a sack of goods hanging at either side. The girl was dressed in coarse stuff cut out with poor skill on some close night by the light of a hurricane lamp. A big hat, sitting on her head like a roof, spoiled the fury of the suns; yet that beauty found full forgiveness for the shabby setting.