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Updated: June 25, 2025
Under the moonlight, Vanamee saw them expanding, delicate pink, faint blue, tenderest variations of lavender and yellow, white shimmering with reflections of gold, all subdued and pallid in the moonlight. By degrees, the night became impregnated with the perfume of the flowers.
Vanamee approached it cautiously, leaving the road, treading carefully upon the moist clods of earth underfoot. Twenty paces distant, he halted. Annixter was there, seated upon a round, white rock, his back towards him. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. He did not move. Silent, motionless, he gazed out upon the flat, sombre land.
Vanamee stirred abruptly in his place, drawing a long breath and looking about him vaguely, as if he came to himself. "You are right," he muttered. "I hardly know what I am saying at times.
Vanamee started up, coming, as it were, to himself, looking wildly about him. Sarria was there. "I saw her," said the priest. "It was Angele, the little girl, your Angele's daughter. She is like her mother." But Vanamee scarcely heard. He walked as if in a trance, pushing by Sarria, going forth from the garden. Angele or Angele's daughter, it was all one with him. It was She. Death was overcome.
The sounds of heavy breathing increased steadily, lights were put out, and before the afterglow had faded from the sky, the gang was asleep. Vanamee, however, remained awake. The night was fine, warm; the sky silver-grey with starlight. By and by there would be a moon. In the first watch after the twilight, a faint puff of breeze came up out of the south.
At half-past twelve, Vanamee and the rest of the drivers ate their lunch in the field, the tin buckets having been distributed to them that morning after breakfast. But in the evening, the routine of the previous day was repeated, and Vanamee, unharnessing his team, riding one horse and leading the others, returned to the division barns and bunk-house. It was between six and seven o'clock.
Promptly discharged from the employ of the sheep-raisers after the lamentable accident near the Long Trestle, Vanamee had presented himself to Harran, asking for employment. The season was beginning; on all the ranches work was being resumed. The rain had put the ground into admirable condition for ploughing, and Annixter, Broderson, and Osterman all had their gangs at work.
Vanamee clasped his head between his clenched fists, rocking himself to and fro. "Oh, the terror of it," he murmured. "The horror of it. And she think of it, Sarria, only sixteen, a little girl; so innocent, that she never knew what wrong meant, pure as a little child is pure, who believed that all things were good; mature only in her love.
"Asleep, sir?" The other started, rubbing his eyes. "Upon my word, I believe I was." "Better go to bed, sir. I am not tired. I think I shall sit out here a little longer." "Well, perhaps I would be better off in bed. YOUR bed is always ready for you here whenever you want to use it." "No I shall go back to Quien Sabe later. Good-night, sir." "Good-night, my boy." Vanamee was left alone.
For a time the peculiarity of the affair was of more interest to Vanamee than even his own distress of spirit, and once or twice he repeated the attempt, almost experimentally, and invariably with the same result: so soon as he seemed to hold Angele in the grip of his mind, he was moved to turn about toward the north, and hurry toward the pear trees on the crest of the hill that over-looked the little valley.
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