"You can go to-morrow, Wen Ho," she said.
"You no wait for Mr. Gael come back? He say he come back."
"No. I'm not going to wait. I guess"--here Joan twisted her mouth into
a smile--"I'm not one of the waiting kind. I'm a-going back to my own
ranch now. It won't seem so awful lonesome, perhaps, as I was thinking
last spring that it would."
She touched the envelope without looking at it.
"Is this money, Wen Ho?"
"I tink so, lady."
She held it, unopened, out to him.
"I will give it to you, then. I have no need of it."
She stood up.
"I am going out now to climb up this mountain back of the house so's I
can see just where I am. I'll come down to-night for dinner and
to-morrow after breakfast I'll be going away. You understand?"
"Lady, you mean give me all this money?" babbled the Chinaman.
"Yes," said Joan gravely; "I have no need of it."
She went past him with her swinging step.
She was coming down the mountain-side that evening, very tired, but
with the curious, peaceful stillness of heart that comes with an
entire acceptance of fate, when she heard the sound of horses' hoofs
in the hollow of the cañon. Her heart began to beat to suffocation.
She ran to where, standing near a big fir tree, she could look
straight down on the trail leading up to Prosper's cabin. Presently
the horsemen came in sight--the one that rode first was tall and broad
and fair, she could see under his hat-brim his straight nose and
firmly modeled chin.
"The sin-buster!" said Joan; then, looking at the other, who rode
behind him, she caught at the tree with crooked hands and began to
sink slowly to her knees. He was tall and slight, he rode with
inimitable grace. As she stared, he took off his sombrero, rested his
hand on the saddle-horn, and looked haggardly, eagerly, up the trail
toward the house. His face was whiter, thinner, worn by protracted
mental pain, but it was the beautiful, living face of Pierre.
Joan shrank back into the shadows of the pines, crouched for a few
minutes like a mortally wounded beast, then ran up the mountain-side
as though the fire that had once touched her shoulder had eaten its
way at last into her heart.