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Updated: July 12, 2025
Other railroaders who were his associates enjoyed going into these places, and Harboro, rather than be alone in the town, had followed disinterestedly in their wake, and had looked on with cold, contemplative eyes at the disorderly picture they presented: unfortunate Mexican girls dancing with cowboys and railroaders and soldiers and nondescripts.
"You won't understand," she said despairingly. And then as he arose and turned toward the door again she went to him abjectly, appealingly. "Harboro!" she cried, "I know I haven't explained it right, but I want you to believe me! It is you I love, really; it is you I am grateful to and proud of. You're everything to me that you've thought of being. I couldn't live without you!"
Harboro held him with eyes which were keen as knives, yet still a little dubious. He was puzzled by the man's good humor; he was watchful for sudden stratagems. His own hands were at his sides, the right within a few inches of his hip. Yet, after all, he was unprepared for what happened. Fectnor leaned forward as if to deposit his coat on the sidewalk.
But the truth, as to how on the night before Fectnor had trapped her and wronged her in her father's house, she told. She knew that Harboro would never have permitted her to rest if she had not told him; she knew that she must have gone mad if she had not unbosomed herself to this man who was as the only tree in the desert of her life.
"God go with you!" he called as he went away, and "God go with you!" came back the placid, kindly echo. And Sylvia realized suddenly that it was a very good thing indeed to be riding along that golden road through the desert. Harboro became aware that some one was staring almost insolently at Sylvia.
As it fell out it was Harboro and not Sylvia who was destined to be humiliated that day a fact which may not seem strange to the discerning. They had got as far as the middle of the Rio Grande bridge without experiencing anything which marred the general effect of a stage set for a Passion Play but with the actors missing; and then they saw a carriage approaching from the Mexican side.
He never repeated the invitation; and others, hearing of the incident, concluded that Harboro was too deeply offended by what the town had done to him to care for anybody's friendship any more. The thing that the town had done to Harboro was like an open page to everybody.
They went on going to church and doing what little tasks they could find to do just like other women. The only precaution they took when a man came was to turn the picture of the Virgin to the wall...." Harboro had sat down again and was regarding her darkly. "I don't mean that I felt about it just as they did when I got older. You see, they had their religion to help them.
I would rather not even try to surmise what was in Sylvia's mind when, following those words of his, she swiftly took his face in her hands with unsuspected strength and hungrily kissed him. But Harboro read no dark meaning into the caress. It seemed to him the natural thing for her to do.
By sundown everybody knew there had been trouble between Harboro and Fectnor, and men who dropped into the Maverick for a game of high-five or poker had their attention called to an unclaimed blue-serge coat hanging from the ice-box. "He got away with his skin," was the way the bartender put the case, "but he left his coat."
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