An hour on the far side of the pass played the emotional part for her of a storm of tears for many another woman.  She rejoiced in being utterly alone; rejoiced in the grandeur of the very wastes around her as mounting guard over the freedom of her thoughts.  There was no living speck on the trail, which she knew lay across the expanse of parched earth to the edge of the blue dome; there was not even a bird in the air.  Undisturbed, she might think anything, pray for anything; she might feed the flame of revolt till the fuel of many weeks’ accumulation had burned itself out and left her calm in the wisdom and understanding that reconciled her to her portion and freshened to return through Galeria to the quiet routine of her daily existence.

Her mind paused in its travels from capital to capital and she was conscious solely of the stark majesty of her surroundings.  She listened.  There was no sound.  The spacious stillness was soothing to her nerves; a specific when all the Eternal Painter’s art failed.  She closed her eyes, trying to realize that great silence as one would try to realize the Infinite.  Then faintly she heard a man’s voice singing.  It seemed at first a trick of the imagination.  But nearer and nearer it came, in the fellowship of life joyfully invading the solitude; and with a readjustment of her faculties to the expected event, she watched the point where the trail dipped on a sharp turn of grade.

Above it rose a cowpuncher hat, then a silk shirt with a string tie, and after that a sage baggage burro with clipped ears, a solemn-faced pony, and an Indian.  Jack was watching his steps in the uneven path, and not until the full length of him had appeared and he was flush on the level with her did he look up.

She was leaning back, her weight partly poised on the flat of her hand on the rock, revealing the full curve of throat and the soft sweep of the lines of her slim figure, erect, her head thrown back, her face in shadow with the sun behind playing in her hair, in half-defiant readiness.  She saw him as the spirit of travel—­its ease, mystery, unattachedness—­which had spanned the distances between her and the horizon, in the freedom of his wandering choice.  His low-pitched exclamation of surprise was vibrant with appreciation of the picture she made, and he stood quite still in a second’s wistful silence, waiting on her first word after the lapse of the many days since he had brought a look of horror into her eyes.

“Hello, Jack!” she said in the old tone of comradeship.  It struck a spark electrifying him with all his old, happy manner.

He swept off his hat with a grand bow, blinking in the blaze of the sun which turned his tan to a bronze and touched the smile, which was born as an inspiration from her greeting, with radiance.

“Hello to you, Mary, guarding the pass to Little Rivers!” he said exultantly.  “You are just the person I wanted to see.  I have been in a hurry to tell you about a certain thing ever since it came to me this morning.”