But there was scant room for sadness in her present
mood. Tomorrow? She let herself be afraid for an instant, to tremble
in delicious mock-terror, because there was nothing for her to fear now
in the whole wide world.
She grew pensive at times; at times in an abandon of gaiety she
chattered back at a quarrelsome squirrel in the thicket. She could
rest later; and if she could not go to him immediately, at least every
step the horse took was bringing them, for a little while, closer
together. And her to-morrow was only one twilight and one dawn away;
her to-morrow would be his, as utterly as was she herself. Dusk came,
and regretfully she told herself that she must be turning back home.
Two rifle shots, sharp and startlingly close, whipped through the quiet
of that lazy afternoon, but they meant nothing to her. She had reached
the height of land, where he had found her the day her roan mare
strayed off while she sat mooning on a log; she was holding out both
arms toward the spot where the valley of Thirty-Mile must lie, when a
team of heavy horses broke around a turn in the road, slowed to a trot
at the sight of her, and came to an abrupt standstill. When the girl
rode nearer to them, merely surprised and curious at first, they
snorted and showed the whites of their eyes and shied back nervously.
Something chill clutched at Barbara's heart while she spoke
pre-emptorily to Ragtime, who was dancing in sympathetic panic.
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