Then she rested with closed eyes, and time seemed neither short nor long.  When Stewart called her she opened her eyes to see the gray of dawn.  She rose and stepped outside.  The horses whinnied.  In a moment she was in the saddle, aware of cramped muscles and a weariness of limbs.  Stewart led off at a sharp trot into the fir forest.  They came to a trail into which he turned.  The horses traveled steadily; the descent grew less steep; the firs thinned out; the gray gloom brightened.

When Madeline rode out of the firs the sun had arisen and the foothills rolled beneath her; and at their edge, where the gray of valley began, she saw a dark patch that she knew was the ranch-house.

XX The Sheriff of El Cajon

About the middle of the forenoon of that day Madeline reached the ranch.  Her guests had all arrived there late the night before, and wanted only her presence and the assurance of her well-being to consider the last of the camping trip a rare adventure.  Likewise, they voted it the cowboys’ masterpiece of a trick.  Madeline’s delay, they averred, had been only a clever coup to give a final effect.  She did not correct their impression, nor think it needful to state that she had been escorted home by only one cowboy.

Her guests reported an arduous ride down the mountain, with only one incident to lend excitement.  On the descent they had fallen in with Sheriff Hawe and several of his deputies, who were considerably under the influence of drink and very greatly enraged by the escape of the Mexican girl Bonita.  Hawe had used insulting language to the ladies and, according to Ambrose, would have inconvenienced the party on some pretext or other if he had not been sharply silenced by the cowboys.

Madeline’s guests were two days in recovering from the hard ride.  On the third day they leisurely began to prepare for departure.  This period was doubly trying for Madeline.  She had her own physical need of rest, and, moreover, had to face a mental conflict that could scarcely be postponed further.  Her sister and friends were kindly and earnestly persistent in their entreaties that she go back East with them.  She desired to go.  It was not going that mattered; it was how and when and under what circumstances she was to return that roused in her disturbing emotion.  Before she went East she wanted to have fixed in mind her future relation to the ranch and the West.  When the crucial hour arrived she found that the West had not claimed her yet.  These old friends had warmed cold ties.

It turned out, however, that there need be no hurry about making the decision.  Madeline would have welcomed any excuse to procrastinate; but, as it happened, a letter from Alfred made her departure out of the question for the present.  He wrote that his trip to California had been very profitable, that he had a proposition for Madeline from a large cattle company, and, particularly, that he wanted to marry Florence soon after his arrival home and would bring a minister from Douglas for that purpose.