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Updated: May 31, 2025
She was ready to obey his lightest command, for she understood his skill. She had no thought for anything but the man she loved. No possibilities of mischance, no threat to herself could find place in her thought. For her Jeff's well-being was her single concern. Elvine rode beside her, step for step. She had told her story as they rode. After that silence between them prevailed.
And though his vision was obstructed by the perfect contours of his wife's figure, he was gazing through her, and beyond her, upon a scene which had for its central interest the suspended figure of a man with his head lolling forward and sideways, and his dead eyes bulging from their sockets. Elvine never stirred. Her gaze was upon the crowded thoroughfare beyond.
As he turned the beast about to depart, just for one instant he looked in her direction. "I will see you again in the morning. By that time I shall have decided what is best for us both." He waited for no more. There was nothing to wait for. He lifted the reins and his horse set off. The dust rose up and screened him from view. Once more Elvine was standing on the veranda.
That's how I figure." There was a deep note of urgency in the woman's voice. Her eyes were alight with a sudden, unmistakable emotion. But even if the man realized these things he ignored them. "My life?" There was something cruelly biting in the reflection. "And all this time you knew Sikkem. You knew we were being raided." "I " Elvine broke off. She had no reply. There could be no reply.
"How do they call you then?" Elvine took the reins and threw them back over the horse's head, and examined the cinching of the saddle with the touch of experience. "Mostly a 'mule-headed bussock, ma'am. Sometimes I allow they change it to 'slap-sided hoboe, or somethin' more fancy.
"Because I married Elvine van Blooren just over six weeks ago." A long day of anxiety and fevered apprehension merged into a night of terror. It was the outcome of a conviction that was irresistible. The shadow of disaster was marching hard upon her heels. Nor had she the power to avoid it. As night came on Elvine remained alone in her twilit bedroom.
Elvine could have cried out with the stab of the question. Only some matter of vital importance justified her action in his eyes. Her gaze was averted to hide her pain. "I should not have come to you otherwise." The man moved to the edge of the veranda to obtain more of the dying light. At that moment the ranchman approached with two saddle horses. Elvine scrutinized him carefully.
Nan had taken Elvine into the house, and one of the barn-hands was waiting to take the horses. Jeff leaped from the saddle. Once in the company of his partner, with all the atmosphere of the world to which he belonged about him, all the excitement of his home-coming seemed to drop from him.
The frankness of the girl reestablished confidence. Elvine sat up. "No," she said. Then the wonder of it possessed her. "But you you alone were following on the tracks of four tough strangers?" she cried incredulously. Nan smiled. Her smile was pretty. It was a confident, wise little smile. "Sure," she said. "I saw them, and it was up to me.
The world had become peopled with warm living creatures whose strivings were now a source of sympathy to him. Life no longer moved about him detached, unappealing. So with the woman. Elvine van Blooren's past was her own. Whatever it was she hugged it to herself, and the very process of doing so had helped to harden her. But she possessed fires she had wilfully hidden, even from herself.
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