The Indian serving women were off in the depths somewhere, the few vaqueros left at home 121 were out about the spreading corrals, and all the men that counted at the ranch had ridden into Corvan early in the day.
Only Ellen, pale as a flower, her sweet mouth drooping, sat listlessly on the hard beaten earth at the eastern side of the squat house where the spruce trees grew, her hands folded in her lap, a sunbonnet covering the golden mass of her hair.
At the sound of his horse’s hoofs on the stone-flagged yard Kenset saw her start, half rise, fling a startled look at him and then sink back, as if even the advent of a stranger was of slight import in the heavy current of her dull life.
He came in close, drew up, and, with his hat in his hand, sat smiling down at her. To Kenset it was more natural to smile than not to.
The girl, for she was scarce more, looked up at him and he saw at once, even under the disfiguring headgear, that here was a breaking heart laid open for all eyes. The very droop and tremble of the lips were proof.
“Mrs. Courtrey?” he asked gently.
At the words, the smile, the unusual courtesy of the removed hat, Ellen rose from her chair, a tall, slim wisp of a woman, whose blue-veined hands were almost transparent.
“Yes,” she said, and waited.
That little waiting, calm, unruffled, made him 122 think sharply of Tharon Last who had waited also for his accounting for himself.
“I am Kenset,” he said, “of over in the foothills. Is your husband at home?”