As the afternoon wore on, Hilda, helping to gather strays, watching always the westward trail for Pearse, began to lose hope. The colonel had not come back from his chase of the rustlers, but his men were here; again Uncle Hank came to her to say that they were full-handed now—no need for her to half kill herself; she’d better get to the house, wash up and have something to eat.

With her eyes on the way down which Pearse might have come, she said, in a discouraged tone:

“I’ll go out just this once more; then I will give it up and ride to the house; I suppose my face does need washing. I don’t feel as if I could eat any supper. But I’ll be glad to get to bed to-night.”

She rode alone, and very slowly. The whole broad plain was beginning to glow with sunset. But Hilda had no eyes for the glories of the sky; all she could see was the empty trail that stretched toward the golden rim in the west. Pearse hadn’t come—or she’d missed him. Back of her, as she halted, was a break of the creek—a deep, shadowy place of willows and wild plum. Well—she’d go down there and wash her face—she knew from the way Uncle Hank had looked at her that washing was badly needed. But when she turned her pony she saw that some one else was there; a horse was drinking at the creek; its rider looked sharply around as she came down the slope.

It was very dusky in the hollow. For a moment she wondered if she hadn’t stumbled onto one of the rustlers, or even overhauled Colonel Marchbanks, who had gone after them. Then the man pulled up his pony’s head, wheeled it and came toward her. She was in full light, he in shadow; she could only see that he was a big, broad-shouldered fellow, fair-haired, in the ordinary cowboy dress, and she believed him to be some one she had never seen before until he came close, lifting his hat, with:

“Why, it is Hilda—and I believe you don’t know me!”

“Oh, Pearse!” In the first shock of delight, the relief from the long sense of disappointment, Hilda forgot her flying hair, her dust-streaked face. “Oh, Pearse—oh, Pearse!”

He put his pony in close enough to shake hands, smiling at her a little oddly. And, all at once, she was shy of him, after all. He looked so terribly grown up. No, he wasn’t her Boy-On-The-Train any more. It made her catch her breath to remember the five days in the cyclone cellar, when he’d played games with her, and even taken a sort of hand at being a princely fugitive while she was a princess. This tall, dignified young man was different, too, from the big boy with the grouch who brought the Sunday pony back to her that time on the trail coming from El Capitan.

“How did you get here without my seeing you?” she asked, a little breathlessly. “I was watching—right where you said—as well as I could. We’ve had a stampede, and—well, I guess you might call it rustlers—the Marchbanks cattle that we were pasturing on the Sorrows.”

“Yes. I know.” Pearse gave her another of those queer looks. But he let it go at that and finished: “I circled around the short-cut to get here. Didn’t want to be seen.”

“Who—who didn’t you want to see you, Pearse?” Hilda asked humbly. “Uncle Hank?”

He shook his head.

“Not that I’d mind going over to the ranch and speaking to him to-day. I’m in no trouble. I’d not be asking anything of him. It’s Marchbanks that I don’t want to see me this time, or know I’m in Lame Jones County.”

“Oh,” said Hilda. Then, “Listen, Pearse. Pull back in here, if you mean to keep out of sight.”

Hoof-beats coming from two directions on the trail. Hilda and Pearse, drawn close in the shelter of the willows, saw the big gray pony that Colonel Marchbanks rode splash through the creek. Just on the further side he stopped. The other rider came on. As Hilda peered through the screening branches, she saw the young fellow that she’d been sure was Fayte Marchbanks pull up and meet the rider of the gray pony.

“Fayte!” she heard the colonel call. The young man jerked off his hat in a sarcastic bow and answered, hardily:

“It’s nobody else, Dad.”

“Where do you think you’re going?” the colonel snarled. “Turn that pony and ride after the men you were helping to rob me. Go with them. You can’t stay here.”

“You’re mistaken there.” Fayte spoke confidently, but there was fear in the glance that flickered to his father’s face. “I was with those men, all right. But we didn’t get the cattle. I’m staying with what’s mine.”

“Yours?” The colonel’s tone was loud, furious. “You haven’t got a cent but what I give you. You—”

“Just so.” Fayte had out his tobacco and was rolling a cigarette. Hilda saw how the fingers shook, but his eyes were impudent. “That’s the way you look at it. You treat me like a child. I’m not standing for it. A man of my age has debts that he doesn’t care to go to his daddy with. If you’d give me what belongs to me—I wouldn’t try to take it.”

“You’ve got a big idea of what belongs to you,” the colonel growled. “Get out of my sight. What do you suppose Pearsall and the others are saying, back there?”

“QuiÉn sabe?” Fayte shrugged, but he threw away the cigarette he had not even attempted to light. “Hadn’t we better ride back together—show ’em it’s all right?”

He still spoke confidently, and started his pony forward with a swing, but the watchers both recognized his relief as the colonel, after a little hesitation, wheeled his heavier mount into the trail after him. They went off quarreling—but they went together.

Hilda and Pearse sat on their ponies, hidden, where they were, till the sound of hoofs died away, then rode out. Pearse glanced about, and said, uncomfortably:

“We won’t have much time together, Hilda; I’ve got to be on my way. But I’ll ride along with you in the direction of the house. You need to get home.”

Slowly they took a little cross-cut Hilda knew of. Pearse spoke again, frowning:

“I’d rather not have seen or heard that, myself. You see, Hilda, the colonel’s a member of the Cattlemen’s Protective Association; my company’s in it, too, of course, and I’m here representing them. We’ve run up against crooked stuff that Fayte Marchbanks was connected with before, and we always have to back away from it, because of the colonel. Anyhow I’ll make my report; and they won’t move because it concerns the colonel’s own cattle, and he’ll have to settle it as a family affair.”

“You—you said when I saw you on the trail, that time you brought Sunday back, that you knew Maybelle Marchbanks.” Hilda was, unconsciously, trying to bring some more personal interest into the talk. “I used to know her over here in Lame Jones County.”

“Yes.”

“Do you like her?”

“Oh,” negligently, “I hardly know her enough to say. There’s mighty little doing between our ranch and the Marchbanks place.”

“Is she very pretty?” Hilda asked the girl’s question, and reddened as Pearse answered, with a smile:

“You can tell whether she’s pretty or not by Fayte’s looks—they’re a good deal alike.”

Hilda thought Maybelle might be very good-looking, indeed, but some instinct kept her from saying so.

“Are there other young folks over where you’re living now?” She put it rather wistfully.

“Yes, plenty of them,” returned Pearse, and somehow Hilda felt chilled.

“Who?”

“Oh, most of the ranches have young folks on them. Our manager has a niece visiting him just now, from Galveston. She plays the piano beautifully.”

Hilda—tired, bedraggled, a truant at the music lessons—suddenly hated that girl from Galveston—and was ashamed of herself for the hatred—and couldn’t be content till she had more details for that hatred to feed on.

“Is she pretty?”

“Our manager’s niece? Yes. Very.”

“Does she know Fayte Marchbanks?”

“Why, yes—I suppose she does.”

“Does she like him?”

“Why, Hilda—what possesses my little pal? Miss Esmond is a young lady—you understand—a grown young lady. Fayte Marchbanks has called on her once or twice since she’s been at the ranch. I think she knew him in Galveston. He speaks good Spanish, she’s traveled a whole lot in Old Mexico and likes to talk to some one who speaks the language well. That’s all there is to it. Most of the nice girls out our way—young ladies, I mean, of course—keep Fayte Marchbanks at a distance, I think.”

They all knew each other; they spoke languages fluently; they had unforbidden companionship with Pearse, and he with them. She was an exile from it all.

“I never get to go anywhere or see anybody,” said Hilda, gathering up her reins as though to start her pony ahead faster. “I haven’t got any friends of my own age.”

“You haven’t?” groped Pearse, taken aback—“I thought you told me about youngsters on the Capadine ranch that you played with.”

There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence after that “youngsters,” a silence in which Hilda was conscious mostly of a tired, aching body and smarting cheeks. Then she spoke again, in a small choked voice:

“I must be getting home.”

“I’ll ride as far as I dare with you,” said Pearse, alert, concerned, but all in the dark. “I wish we could have had more of a visit together.”

“Oh!” Hilda turned on him tear-blinded, angry eyes, “you needn’t bother to come any further. I can just play with youngsters, I suppose!” She lifted the rein and was off at a gallop, and she never looked back to see how he took that blow.

She didn’t look back. She wouldn’t look back. But, after the first, she went very slowly. Any one who’d wanted to could have overtaken her in a minute. Almost walking her pony that way made her late. Supper was over. She went in, head down, moving with dragging steps. She felt beaten and bruised; sunburned till she was almost in a fever. To these things she was more or less accustomed; a night of sound sleep would put them right; but the wounds of that interview with Pearse were new and terrifying; the sting of chagrin that it had left upon the face of her spirit was intolerable. That parting cut she had aimed at him was, by some cruel magic, cleaving her own heart now. It ached and bled. How could she ever bear it?

She washed up, stumbled into Sam Kee’s kitchen and sat down at his little table to eat the supper he had saved for her. The old Chinaman turned from the stove, where he was stirring something, intending to give her one of his grumbling scoldings. When he saw how worsted she looked, how she sipped at her coffee and ate almost nothing, he went instead and fetched a little dish of lemon jelly from the pantry, saying, more in sympathy than reproach:

“Sam Kee tell you blue horse debbil. Tell you he kill you.”

“I had to ride him,” murmured Hilda absently.

Oh, it hurt dreadfully to be angry at Pearse—to feel bitter toward him. If she had a chance to talk with him now—only for a minute—only a minute—she would put her pride in her pocket and make it all right at any cost.

She shoved the lemon jelly away; then, catching Sam Kee’s crestfallen look, drew it back and ate a little of it.

“That’s all, Sam,” she said, trying to smile. “Can’t eat any more now. Too tired. Go to bed now.”

But as she was on her way to the stair’s foot, Hank’s voice called to her from the office:

“Come in here a minute, Pettie—I’ve got something to tell you that won’t keep till morning.”

She went in and sat down on the low stool near his chair, leaning over against his arm. Every line of her slim figure drooped; the arms hung listlessly at her sides.

“Pettie!” he said, in quick alarm. “Anything the matter, honey?”

“Oh, I stayed out too long. I’m perfectly dog tired. That’s all.”

“Umm-humm,” agreed the old man gently, “I should think you would be. When I went to the corral this evening I seen what horse it was you rode to Tres PiÑos.”

Eyes down, Hilda waited for the reproof. She was at that dead ebb, physical, mental, emotional, that could expect nothing but blame, defeat.

“Mose was the only one that could get there,” she said, lifelessly, offering it as a statement, not a defense.

“Why, I’m not mad at you about it, honey.” The old man’s voice was soft. “I’m proud of you. You asked for the horse in the first place—he’s your’n now.”

A little tingle of delight stirred the flat level of Hilda’s depression.

“You said he wouldn’t be fit for a lady for three years,” she began, and then broke off—“but then I’m not a lady. I suppose I’m just one of the youngsters. I can’t play decently on the piano, or—speak good Spanish—or any of those things. Maybe I never will.”

Uncle Hank looked at her in blank amazement. When he spoke there was sort of a reluctance in his voice.

“The—er—what I wanted to say to you just now has got something to do with that—”

She looked up at him, a little startled.

“—That matter of education, I mean. Colonel Marchbanks rode in pretty soon after you left the pasture. Brought that boy of his with him; made some kind of a talk about Fayte having been mistaken in the day he wanted them cows moved, but that he’d give the boy orders to meet him here and to help him and—well, Pettie, what is a man to say? Best we can do is to forget that we had any suspicions. He’s gone on now to Amarillo—to be back here in about a week.”

“Yes?”

Hilda had dropped her head once more; she did not raise it now. After a short pause, in which Hank regarded anxiously the bit of her face which he could see, he went on:

“The colonel’s taken a great liking to you, Pettie. He praised you high.”

This was Uncle Hank’s medicine for her depression. She managed a smile. But he was not done. The tone in which he proceeded suggested careful restraint. He did not look at her.

“Marchbanks has asked for you to go and stay at his ranch for a year—or as much longer as we’re willing to have you—and study under a good teacher with his daughter, Maybelle. Course, I wasn’t making any such arrangements as that; but I talked it over with him—on a business basis, you know. We settled what your board would be and what our share of the teacher’s pay ought to come to—if you went.”

Every line in Hilda’s figure had begun to change. She fetched a long breath. The dusty feet were drawn back under her; slowly the drooping shoulders straightened; her head lifted; in the eyes that sought the old man’s face light was growing.

“Oh,” she breathed—“oh, Uncle Hank!”

Hank had expected at least some reluctance on his girl’s part to leave the ranch. She’d had solid schooling, gone flying through the grammar grades, was well grounded in all the essentials now. To every proposition for further education she’d always said that she expected to be a ranchwoman, and, beyond what she had already, reading would have to take the place of schooling. But now, as he studied the tremulous face, he saw there would be a different answer, and he said quietly:

“That teacher’s a college graduate—the best to be had. She could get you ready for any college in the country, I reckon.”

Hilda lowered her eyes hastily.

“I—I liked Maybelle,” she said, speaking very low. “Isn’t it—a pretty name—Uncle Hank?”

“Right nice,” agreed Hank, suppressing a twinge—his girl, like any other girl, was looking for young companionship; that’s what made her eager for the New Mexico trip, and change.

Hilda, her eyes held defensively down, was flying back in thought to that unspoken prayer of hers for another minute—only a minute—another chance to pocket her pride and make it all right with Pearse. Hank watched her, puzzled.

“Er—you’re pleased, ain’t you, honey? You want to go—don’t you?”

Hilda started, and the look flashed up at him was almost like terror.

“Oh, yes!” she cried. “Why—doesn’t it come in splendidly? Aren’t you glad?”

“Well,” said the old man mildly, “seeing that it makes you that-a-way, I reckon I am. You see,” he took the slim hands that came out anxiously toward him, “you see, when the colonel first named it to me, I felt sort of doubtful, but now I know. You’ve showed me.”