“Yes,” sighed Tharon, “it’s summer now, an’ Jim Last died in spring. A whole season gone.”
A whole season had gone, indeed, since that tragic night.
Last’s Holding had missed its master at each turn and point. A thousand times did Conford, the foreman, catch himself in the act of going to the big room to find him at his desk, a big, vital force, intent on the accounts of the ranch, a thousand times did he long for his keen insight. The vaqueros missed him and his open hand.
The very dogs at the steps missed him, and so did El Rey, waiting in his corral for the step that did not come, the strong hand on his bit.
And how much his daughter missed him only the stars and the pale Virgin knew.
For the next few days following the short, awkward visit of the stranger Tharon felt a prickle of uneasiness under her skin at every thought of it. There was something in the memory that confused and distressed her, a feeling of failure, of a lack in her that put her in a bad light to herself.
She knew that, instinctively, she had been protecting her own, that since Last’s had stepped out in the light against Courtrey she must take no 100 chance. But should she have taken back the common courtesy of the offered meal? Would it not have been better to let him stay and meet Conford who would have been in at noon?
She vexed herself a while with these questions, and then dismissed them with her cool good sense.
“It’s done,” she told herself, “an’ can’t be helped. An’ yet, there was somethin’ about him, somethin’ that made me think of Jim Last himself––somethin’ in his quiet eyes––as if they had both come from somewhere outside Lost Valley where they grow different men. It was a––bigness, a softness. I don’t know.”
And with that last wistful thought she forgot all about the incident and the man, for the prediction of Jameson that dusk at the head of Rolling Cove became reality.