Chapter 21

Harboro and Sylvia were taking leave of Wayne and Valdez. Their horses had been brought and they were in their saddles, their horses' heads already in the direction of Eagle Pass. Valdez was adding final instructions touching the road.

"If you're not quite sure of the way I'll get some one to ride in with you," said Wayne; but Harboro would not listen to this.

"I'll not lose the way," he declared; though there remained in his mind a slight dubiousness on this point. The moon would be down before the ride was finished, and there were not a few roads leading away from the main thoroughfare.

Then, much to Harboro's surprise, Runyon appeared, riding away from the corral on his beautiful dun horse. He overheard the conference between Harboro and the others, and he made himself one of the group with pleasant familiarity.

"Ah, Harboro, must you be going, too?" he inquired genially; and then: "If you don't mind, I'll ride with you. It's rather a lonely road at this hour, and I've an idea I know the way better than you."

Harboro's eyes certainly brightened with relief. "It's good of you to offer," he declared heartily. "By all means, ride with us." He turned toward Sylvia, plainly expecting her to second the invitation.

"It will be much pleasanter," she said; though it seemed to Harboro that her words lacked heartiness. She was busying herself with the little package at her pommel--old Antonia's _rebozo_.

"And you must all remember that there's one more latch-string out here at the Quemado," said Wayne, "whenever you feel inclined to ride this way."

They were off then. The sound of violins and the shuffle of feet became faint, and the last gay voice died in the distance. Only now and then, when the horses' feet fell in unison, there drifted after them the note of a violin--like a wind at night in an old casement. And then the three riders were presently aware of being quite alone on a windless waste, with a sentinel yucca standing on a distant height here and there between them and the descending moon, and distant groups of mesquite wreathing themselves in the silver mist of early morning. It had been a little past midnight when they left the Quemado.

Sylvia, riding between the two men, was so obviously under some sort of constraint that Harboro sought to arouse her. "I'm afraid you overtaxed yourself, Sylvia," he suggested. "It's all been pleasant, but rather--heroic." It was an effort for him to speak lightly and cheerfully. The long ride out to the Quemado was a thing to which he was not accustomed, and the merrymaking had seemed to him quite monotonous after an hour or two. Even the midnight supper had not seemed a particularly gay thing to him. He was not quite a youth any more, and he had never been young, it seemed to him, in the way in which these desert folk were young. Joy seemed to them a kind of intoxication--as if it were not to be indulged in save at long intervals.

"I didn't overtax myself," replied Sylvia. "The ending of things is never very cheerful. I suppose that's what I feel just now--as if, at the end, things don't seem quite worth while, after all."

Harboro held to his point. "You _are_ tired," he insisted.

Runyon interposed cheerfully. "And there are always the beginnings," he said. "We're just beginning a new day and a fine ride." He looked at Harboro as if inviting support and added, in a lower tone: "And I'd like to think we were beginning a pleasant acquaintance."

Harboro nodded and his dark eyes beamed with pleasure. It had seemed to him that this final clause was the obvious thing for Runyon to say, and he had waited to see if he would say it. He did not suppose that he and Sylvia would see a great deal of Runyon in Eagle Pass, where they were not invited to entertainments of any kind, but there might be occasional excursions into the country, and Runyon seemed to be invited everywhere.

But Sylvia refused to respond to this. The pagan in her nature reasserted itself, and she felt resentful of Runyon's affable attitude toward Harboro. The attraction which she and Runyon exerted toward each other was not a thing to be brought within the scope of a conventionally friendly relationship. Its essence was of the things furtive and forbidden. It should be fought savagely and kept within bounds, even if it could never be conquered, or it should be acknowledged and given way to in secret. Two were company and three a crowd in this case. She might have derived a great deal of tumultuous joy from Runyon's friendship for her if it could have been manifested in secret, but she could feel only a sense of duplicity and shame if his friendship included Harboro, too. The wolf does not curry favor with the sheep-dog when it hungers for a lamb. Such was her creed. In brief, Sylvia had received her training in none of the social schools. She was a daughter of the desert--a bit of that jetsam which the Rio Grande leaves upon its arid banks as it journeys stealthily to the sea.

They were riding along in silence half an hour later, their horses at a walk, when the stillness of the night was rudely shattered by the sound of iron wheels grinding on stone, and in an instant a carriage could be seen ascending a branch road which arose out of a near-by _arroyo_.

The riders checked their horses and waited: not from curiosity, but in response to the prompting of a neighborly instinct. Travellers in the desert are never strangers to one another.

The approaching carriage proved to be an impressively elegant affair, the locality considered, drawn by two horses which were clearly not of the range variety. And then further things were revealed: a coachman sat on the front seat, and a man who wore an air of authority about him like a kingly robe sat alone on the back seat. Then to Harboro, sitting high with the last rays of the moon touching his face, came the hearty hail: "Harboro! How are you, Harboro?"

It was the voice of the General Manager.

Harboro turned his horse so that he stood alongside the open carriage. He leaned over the wheel and shook hands with the General Manager. The encounter seemed to him to add the one desirable touch of familiarity to the night ride. He explained his presence away out on the Quemado Road; and the General Manager also explained. He had been spending the evening with friends on a near-by ranch. His family were remaining for the night, but it had been necessary for him to return to Piedras Negras.

Harboro looked about for his companions, intending to introduce them. But they were a little too far away to be included comfortably in such a ceremony. For some reason Runyon had chosen to ride on a few steps.

"How many are you?" inquired the General Manager, with a note of purposefulness in his voice. "Three? That's good. You get in with me. Tie your horse behind. Two can ride abreast more comfortably than three, and you and I can talk. I've never felt so lonesome in my life." He moved over to one side of the seat, and looked back as if he expected to help in getting Harboro's horse tied behind the carriage. His invitation did not seem at all like a command, but it did seem to imply that a refusal would be out of the question.

The arrangement seemed quite simple and desirable to Harboro. He was not a practised horseman, and he was beginning to feel the effect of saddle strain. Moreover, he had realized a dozen times during the past hour that two could ride easily side by side on the desert road, while a third rider was continually getting in the way.

He called to Runyon cheerfully: "You two go on ahead--I'm going to ride the rest of the way in."

"Fine!" called back Runyon. To Runyon everything always seemed precisely ideal--or at least such was the impression he created.

It became a little cavalcade now, the riders leading the way. Riders and carriage kept close together for a time. Sylvia remained silent, but she felt the presence of her companion as a deliciously palpable thing. Harboro and the General Manager were talking, Harboro's heavy tones alternating at unequal intervals with the crisp, penetrating voice of the General Manager--a voice dry with years, but vital nevertheless.

After a time the horses in the carriage broke into a rhythmic trot. In the darkness Runyon's eyes gleamed with satisfaction. "We'll have to have a little canter, or we'll get run over," he said gayly, and he and Sylvia gave rein to their horses.

In a very few minutes they had put a distance of more than a hundred yards between them and the occupants of the carriage.

"This is more like it!" exclaimed Runyon exultantly. Tone and words alike implied all too strongly his satisfaction at being rid of Harboro--and Sylvia perversely resented the disloyalty of it, the implication of intrigue carried on behind a mask.

And then she forgot her scruples. The boy who had chosen her horse for her had known what he was doing, after all. The animal galloped with a dashing yet easy movement which was delightful. She became exhilarated by a number of things. The freedom of movement, the occasional touch of her knee against Runyon's, the mysterious vagueness of the road, now that the moon had gone down.

Perhaps they both forgot themselves for a time, and then Sylvia checked her horse with a laugh in which there was a sound of dismay. "We ought to wait for them to catch up," she said.

Runyon was all solicitude immediately. "We seem to have outdistanced them completely," he said. They turned their horses about so that they faced the north. "I can't even hear them," he added. Then, with the irrepressible optimism which was his outstanding quality, he added laughingly: "They'll be along in a few minutes. But wasn't it a fine ride?"

She had not framed an answer to this question when her mind was diverted swiftly into another channel. She held her head high and her body became slightly rigid. She glanced apprehensively at Runyon and realized that he, too, was listening intently.

A faint roar which seemed to come from nowhere fell on their ears. The darkness swiftly deepened, so that the man and the woman were almost invisible to each other. That sinister roaring sound came closer, as if mighty waters were rolling toward them far away. The northern sky became black, as if a sable curtain had been let down.

And then upon Sylvia's startled senses the first breath of the norther broke. The little winds, running ahead as an advance-guard of the tempest, flung themselves upon her and caught at her hair and her riding-habit. They chilled her.

"A norther!" she exclaimed, and Runyon called back through the whistle of the winds: "It's coming!"

His voice had the quality of a battle-cry, joined to the shouts of the descending storm.