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Updated: June 6, 2025
On, across the bleak country, with the snow pelting in our faces along roads so deserted, that our carriage-wheels made the only sound audible, and that might have been heard distinctly for miles. All of a sudden, the horses were pulled up. Three or four ill-looking figures had started out of a ditch-bank, and caught hold of the reins. "Holloa there! What do you want?" "Money." "Let go my horses!
His own thoughts were as that roily pool where he had ducked the old man in the darkness. He overslept himself, after thinking he should not sleep at all, and started down his beat not until noon of the next day. Halfway to the bridge on the ditch-bank he met Nancy Lark.
But one morning the white-faced heifer broke away and bolted up the ditch-bank, and in a cloud of sun-smitten dust Nancy followed, a figure of virginal wrath with scarlet cheeks and wind-blown hair. Reining her pony on the narrow bank, she called across to Travis in a voice as clear and fresh as her colors: "Head her off, can't you? What are you about!"
The lights and shadows chased her in and out among the willows and fleecy cottonwoods and tall swamp-grasses; but Travis rode in the glare, on the high ditch-bank, and, although they passed each other daily, he had never had a good look at the "pretty girl at Lark's."
Travis was as much amazed as if Diana with the moon on her forehead had appeared on the ditch-bank to take old Solomon Lark under her maiden protection; but no less he stuck to his prize of war. "Your father hasn't time to change his clothes just yet, Miss Nancy; he's got some work to do first." "Who are you, to be setting my father to work? Let go of him this minute!
He cut sage-brush and tore up tules by the roots, and piled them as a wing-dam against the outer bank, and heaped dirt like mad upon the mats; and as he worked, alone, where forty men were needed, came Nancy, with glowing face, flying down the ditch-bank, calling the word of exquisite relief: "I've shut off the water. Was that right?" Right!
He listened awhile, and then walked on with long, light steps and gained upon the sound, which persisted, defining itself as a muffled churning at marked intervals, with now and then a wait between. The prodding was of some tool at work under water, at the ditch-bank.
He knelt with the child in his arms by a little runnel in the ditch-bank. When the water touched her she opened her eyes with that wide, momentary stare so painful to behold. "My little darling!" Muriel smiled, and nestled to him. "Indeed, I am not hurt, dear father." Lord Luxmore, standing by, seemed much relieved, and again pressed his apologies. No answer.
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