The trek is over. And it was not one of triumph. For we find ourselves, sometimes, in deeper water than we imagine. Then we have to choke and gasp for a while before we can get our breath back.

Peter, in the first place, didn’t appear with the prairie-schooner. He left that to come later in the day, with Whinnie and Struthers. He appeared quite early Monday morning, with fire in his eye, and with a demand to see the master of the house. Heaven knows what he had heard, or how he had heard it. But the two men were having it hot and heavy when I felt it was about time for me to step into the room. To be quite frank, I had not expected any such outburst from Duncan. I knew his feelings were not involved, and where you have a vacuum it is impossible, of course, to have an explosion. I interpreted his resentment as a show of opposition to save his face. But I was wrong. And I was wrong about Peter. That mild-eyed man is no plaster saint. He can fight, if he’s goaded into it, and fight like a bulldog. 368 He was saying a few plain truths to Duncan, when I stepped into the room, a few plain truths which took the color out of the Dour Man’s face and made him shake with anger.

“For two cents,” Duncan was rather childishly shouting at him, “I’d fill you full of lead!”

“Try it!” said Peter, who wasn’t any too steady himself. “Try it, and you’d at least end up with doing something in the open!”

Duncan studied him, like a prize-fighter studying his waiting opponent.

“You’re a cheap actor,” he finally announced. “This sort of thing isn’t settled that way, and you know it.”

“And it’s not going to be settled the way you intended,” announced Peter Ketley.

“What do you know about my intentions?” demanded Duncan.

“Much more than you imagine,” retorted Peter. “I’ve got your record, McKail, and I’ve had it for three years. I’ve stood by, until now; but the time has come when I’m going to have a hand in this thing. And you’re not going to get your freedom by dragging this woman’s name through a divorce-court. If 369 there’s any dragging to be done, it’s your carcass that’s going to be tied to the tail-board!”

Duncan stood studying him with a face cheese-colored with hate.

“Aren’t you rather double-crossing yourself?” he mocked.

“I’m not thinking about myself,” said Peter.

“Then what’s prompting all the heroics?” demanded Duncan.

“For two years and more, McKail,” Peter cried out as he stepped closer to the other man, “you’ve given this woman a pretty good working idea of hell. And I’ve seen enough of it. It’s going to end. It’s got to end. But it’s not going to end the way you’ve so neatly figured out!”

“Then how do you propose to end it?” Duncan demanded, with a sort of second-wind of composure. But his face was still colorless.

“You’ll see when the time comes,” retorted Peter.

“You may have rather a long wait,” taunted Duncan.

“I have waited a number of years,” answered the other man, with a dignity which sent a small thrill up and down my spine. “And I can wait a number of years more if I have to.” 370

“We all knew, of course, that you were waiting,” sneered my husband.

Peter turned to fling back an answer to that, but I stepped between them. I was tired of being haggled over, like marked-down goods on a bargain-counter. I was tired of being a passive agent before forces that seemed stripping me of my last shred of dignity. I was tired of the shoddiness of the entire shoddy situation.

And I told them so. I told them I’d no intention of being bargained over, and that I’d had rather enough of men for the rest of my natural life, and if Duncan wanted his freedom he was at liberty to take it without the slightest opposition from me. And I said a number of other things, which I have no wish either to remember or record. But it resulted in Duncan staring at me in a resurrection-plant sort of way, and in Peter rather dolorously taking his departure. I wanted to call him back, but I couldn’t carpenter together any satisfactory excuse for his coming back, and I couldn’t see any use in it.

So instead of journeying happily homeward in the cavernous old prairie-schooner, I felt a bit ridiculous as Tokudo impassively carried our belongings out to the canvas-covered wagon and Poppsy and I climbed 371 aboard. The good citizens of American Hill stared after us as we rumbled down through the neatly boulevarded streets, and I felt suspiciously like a gypsy-queen who’d been politely requested by the local constabulary to move on.

It wasn’t until we reached the open country that my spirits revived. Then the prairie seemed to reach out its hand to me and give me peace. We camped, that first night, in the sheltering arm of a little coulÉe threaded by a tiny stream. We cooked bacon and eggs and coffee while Whinnie out-spanned his team and put up his tent.

I sat on an oat-sack, after supper, with Poppsy between my knees, watching the evening stars come out. They were worlds, I remembered, some of them worlds perhaps with sorrowing men and women on them. And they seemed very lonely and far-away worlds, until I heard the drowsy voice of my Poppsy say up through the dusk: “In two days more, Mummy, we’ll be back to Dinkie, won’t we?”

And there was much, I remembered, for which a mother should be thankful.