It was not even an hour's visit that the Virginian was able to pay his lady love. But neither
had he come a hundred miles to see her. The necessities of his wandering work had
chanced to bring him close enough for a glimpse of her, and this glimpse he took, almost
on the wing. For he had to rejoin a company of men at once.
"Yu' got my letter?" he said.
"Yesterday! I wrote it three weeks ago. Well, yu' got it. This cannot be the hour with you
that I mentioned. That is coming, and maybe very soon."
She could say nothing. Relief she felt, and yet with it something like a pang.
"To-day does not count," he told her, "except that every time I see you counts with me.
But this is not the hour that I mentioned."
What little else was said between them upon this early morning shall be told duly. For
this visit in its own good time did count momentously, though both of them took it lightly
while its fleeting minutes passed. He returned to her two volumes that she had lent him
long ago and with Taylor he left a horse which he had brought for her to ride. As a good-
by, he put a bunch of flowers in her hand. Then he was gone, and she watched him going
by the thick bushes along the stream. They were pink with wild roses; and the meadow-
larks, invisible in the grass, like hiding choristers, sent up across the empty miles of air
their unexpected song. Earth and sky had been propitious, could he have stayed; and
perhaps one portion of her heart had been propitious too. So, as he rode away on Monte,
she watched him, half chilled by reason, half melted by passion, self-thwarted, self-
accusing, unresolved. Therefore the days that came for her now were all of them unhappy
ones, while for him they were filled with work well done and with changeless longing.
One day it seemed as if a lull was coming, a pause in which he could at last attain that
hour with her. He left the camp and turned his face toward Bear Creek. The way led him
along Butte Creek. Across the stream lay Balaam's large ranch; and presently on the other
bank he saw Balaam himself, and reined in Monte for a moment to watch what Balaam
was doing.
"That's what I've heard," he muttered to himself. For Balaam had led some horses to the
water, and was lashing them heavily because they would not drink. He looked at this
spectacle so intently that he did not see Shorty approaching along the trail.
"Morning," said Shorty to him, with some constraint.
