12
Allie Lee possessed a mind at once active and contemplative. While she dreamed of Neale and their future she busied herself with many tasks, and a whole year flew by without a lagging or melancholy hour.
Neale, she believed, had been detained or sent back to Omaha, or given more important work than formerly. She divined Slingerland’s doubt, but she would not give it room in her consciousness. Her heart told her that all was well with Neale, and that sooner or later he would return to her.
In Allie love had worked magic. It had freed her from a horrible black memory. She had been alone; she had wanted to die so as to forget those awful yells and screams—the murder—the blood—the terror and the anguish; she had nothing to want to live for; she had almost hated those two kind men who tried so hard to make her forget. Then suddenly, she never quite remembered when, she had seen Neale with different eyes. A few words, a touch, a gift, and a pledge—and life had been transformed for Allie Lee. Like a flower blooming overnight, her heart had opened to love, and all the distemper in her blood and all the blackness in her mind were dispelled. The relief from pain and dread was so great that love became a beautiful and all-absorbing passion. Freed then, and strangely happy, she took to the life around her as naturally as if she had been born there, and she grew like a wild flower. Neale returned to her that autumn to make perfect the realization of her dreams. When he went away she could still be happy. She owed it to him to be perfect in joy, faith, love, and duty; and her adversity had discovered to her an inward courage and an indomitable will. She lived for Neale.
Summer, autumn, winter passed, short days full of solitude, beauty, thought, and anticipation, and always achievement, for she could not stay idle. When the first green brightened the cottonwoods and willows along the brook she knew that before their leaves had attained their full growth Neale would be on his way to her. A strange and inexplicable sense of the heart told her that he was coming.
More than once that spring had she bent over the mossy rock to peer down at her face mirrored in the crystal spring. Neale had made her aware of her beauty, and she was proud of it, since it seemed to be such a strange treasure to him.
On the May morning that Slingerland left her alone she was startled by the clip-clop of horses trotting up the trail a few hours after his departure.
Her first thought was that Neale and Larry had returned. All her being suddenly radiated with rapture. She flew to the door.
Four horsemen rode into the clearing, but Neale was not among them.