Night slipped silently down from the hills—the soft, cool, velvet night of the Arizona uplands. The girl drooped in the saddle from sheer exhaustion. The past few days had been hard ones, and last night she had lost most of her sleep. She had ridden far on rough trails, had been subjected to a stress of emotion to which her placid maiden life had been unused. But she made no complaint. It was part of the creed she had unconsciously learned from her father to game out whatever had to be endured.
The outlaw, though he saw her fatigue, would not heed it. She had chosen to set herself apart from him. Let her ask him to stop and rest, if she wanted to. It would do her pride good to be humbled. Yet in his heart he admired her the more, 314 because she asked no favors of him and forbore the womanish appeal of tears.
His watch showed eleven o’clock by the moon when the lights of Mesa glimmered in the valley below.
“We’ll be in now in half an hour,” he said.
She had no comment to make, and silence fell between them again until they reached the outskirts of the town.
“We’ll get off here and walk in,” he ordered; and, after she had dismounted, he picketed the horses close to the road. “You can send for yours in the mornin’. Mine will be in the livery barn by that time.”
The streets were practically deserted in the residential part of the town. Only one man they saw, and at his approach MacQueen drew Melissy behind a large lilac bush.
As the man drew near the outlaw’s hand tightened on the shoulder of the girl. For the man was her father—dusty, hollow-eyed, and haggard. The two crouching behind the lilacs knew that this iron man was broken by his fears for his only child, the girl who was the apple of his eye.
Not until he was out of hearing did Melissy open her lips to the stifled cry she had suppressed. Her arms went out to him, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. For herself she had not let herself break down, but for her father’s grief her heart was like water. 315
“All right. Don’t break down now. You’ll be with him inside of half an hour,” the outlaw told her gruffly.