alternated
with clear bright spaces. The mile-wide mouth of the canyon opened
upon the Basin, down into a world of wild timbered ranges and ravines,
valleys and hills, that rolled and tumbled in dark-green waves to the
Sierra Anchas.
But for once Ellen seemed singularly unresponsive to this panorama of
wildness and grandeur. Her ears were like those of a listening deer,
and her eyes continually reverted to the open places along the Rim. At
first, in her excitement, time flew by. Gradually, however, as the sun
moved westward, she began to be restless. The soft thud of dropping
pine cones, the rustling of squirrels up and down the shaggy-barked
spruces, the cracking of weathered bits of rock, these caught her keen
ears many times and brought her up erect and thrilling. Finally she
heard a sound which resembled that of an unshod hoof on stone.
Stealthily then she took her rifle and slipped back through the pine
thicket to the spot she had chosen. The little pines were so close
together that she had to crawl between their trunks. The ground was
covered with a soft bed of pine needles, brown and fragrant. In her
hurry she pricked her ungloved hand on a sharp pine cone and drew the
blood. She sucked the tiny wound. "Shore I'm wonderin' if that's a
bad omen," she muttered, darkly thoughtful. Then she resumed her
sinuous approach to the edge of the thicket, and presently reached it.
Ellen lay flat a moment to recover her breath, then raised herself on
her elbows. Through an opening in the fringe of buck brush she could
plainly see the promontory where she had stood with Jean Isbel, and
also the approaches by which he might come. Rather nervously she
realized that her covert was hardly more than a hundred feet from the
promontory. It was imperative that she be absolutely silent. Her eyes
searched the openings along the Rim. The gray form of a deer crossed
one of these, and she concluded it had made the sound she had heard.
Then she lay down more comfortably and waited. Resolutely she held, as
much as possible, to her sensorial perceptions. The meaning of Ellen
Jorth lying in ambush just to see an Isbel was a conundrum she refused
to ponder in the present. She was doing it, and the physical act had
its fascination. Her ears, attuned to all the sounds of the lonely
forest, caught them and arranged them according to her knowledge of
woodcraft.
A long hour passed by. The sun had slanted to a point halfway between
the zenith and the horizon. Suddenly a thought confronted Ellen Jorth:
"He's not comin'," she whispered. The instant that idea presented
itself she felt a blank sense of loss, a vague regret—something that
must have been disappointment. Unprepared for this, she was held by
surprise for a moment, and then she was stunned. Her spirit, swift and
rebellious, had no time to rise in her defense. She was a lonely,
guilty, miserable girl, too weak for pride to uphold, too fluctuating
to know her real self. She stretched there, burying her face in the
pine needles, digging her fingers into them, wanting nothing so much as
that they might hide her. The moment was incomprehensible to Ellen,
and utterly intolerable. The sharp pine needles, piercing her wrists
and cheeks, and her hot heaving breast, seemed to give her exquisite
relief.
The shrill snort of a horse sounded near at hand. With a shock Ellen's
body stiffened. Then she quivered a little and her feelings underwent
swift change. Cautiously and noiselessly she raised herself upon her
elbows and peeped through the opening in the brush. She saw a man
tying a horse to a bush somewhat back from the Rim. Drawing a rifle
from its saddle sheath he threw it in the hollow of his arm and walked
to the edge of the precipice. He gazed away across the Basin and
appeared lost in contemplation or thought. Then he turned to look back
into the forest, as if he expected some one.
Ellen recognized the lithe figure, the dark face so like an Indian's.
It was Isbel. He had come. Somehow his coming
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