He flung himself down on his face. The scent of pine needles and dead leaves was there, waiting for him. The stillness of the wood took them both, and for a few minutes they were silent.
And as he lay there, with her sitting beside him, something of the desert, of an hour before, came running along his veins and took him, and, something, too, of the time when he had had her before him on his horse, galloping. When that time had been he could not say; but he remembered it with distinctness, and that day he had had his arms about her.
“We rode—on a horse,” he submitted, suddenly. “C’n you ’member that day?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Don’t talk,” she begged him, “just rest. I want to rest.”
The Inger was silent. His mind was busy trying to piece together what he knew of that day—of her there before him on his horse, of her face laughing at him as she ran away.
“You threw me a kiss,” he offered, after a pause.
“Don’t talk, don’t talk,” she begged him. “I can’t breathe—let me rest.”
“I wish it was that day now,” he said foolishly, and drew a deep breath, and lay quiet. But in a few minutes he roused himself, his mind struggling with a new problem. What a fool he was, wishing for that day, when here she was, just the same as then. What was the matter with this day?
“Wha’s the matter with this day?” he inquired, reasonably. Then he remembered. They were lost, of course. The trail was gone—gone clean off.