Rudy's father had been Rudy's life, and she lay awake in the night now, because a man strong in his youth and the power of his love was coming between them. The atmosphere of her training had left her without the protection of suspicion, and Rudy had only the education that her frailness, their poverty, and shifting life could yield. Her femininity showed her Billy Owen's masterful physique, his superior strength, and tonic vitality. She had begun to have insight into Billy's will power. But, of all men, he gave to her deference, and gentleness, and the alertness of his interests.
And what she was conscious must come, came.
Two miners were hurt in an accident by fire, and the minister was called for in the absence of the doctor. He had arranged to hold services in a village three miles north, and Rudy was left to carry to it the news of the church's closing. She put on a sun-bonnet and went out to the barn. The old mare stepped listlessly into the shafts, when a shadow fell over the floor, and Billy filled up the doorway.
"Your father said I was to look out that you got there." He laughed, uncertain still of his welcome.
Rudy had dreaded the lonely twilight drive, and her face must have spoken for her tongue had not; but Billy took up the harnessing with a light on his own face that sent Rudy into the depths of her bonnet. She kept on her side of the fat mare, and buckled and strapped in a tangle of leather, with an indiscretion that sent her hands to the check at Jane's head just at the moment when Billy's must meet them.
And Billy held them close, while Jane dropped her nose and sniffed at some barley grains, indifferent to the fact that her toilet was forgotten.
"Your father'd give me the word to fight the man that could take ye from me now," Billy said.
And Rudy was whiter than the hair on Jane where it happened to be clean.
"It's my father I shall never leave," she answered him.
"It's the father, His book tells ye, shall be left for the husband."