But as he looked down at her from the buckboard, Marianne saw his expression clear to awareness of her.  He even reached out and rested his hand on her head so that her face was tilted up to him.

“Honey,” he said, “you’re eating your heart out about something.  How come?”

“Red Perris is overdue,” she said.  “But I don’t want to bother you with my troubles, Dad.”

“Red Perris?  Who’s he?”

“Don’t you remember?  I told you how he rode Rickety.  And now I’ve sent for him to come and hunt Alcatraz—­because once that man-killing horse is dead, it will be easy to get the mares back.  And every day counts—­ every day the mares are getting wilder!”

“What mares?” Then he nodded.  “I remember.  And they ain’t nothing but that worrying you, Marianne.”

His expression of concern vanished; his glance wandered far east where the shades were already brimming the valleys.

“I’ll be getting on, then, honey.”

All at once, for pity at thought of him driving into the lonely silences, she caught his hand.  It was still lean, hard of palm, sinewy with strength of which most extreme age, indeed, would never entirely rob it.  And the touch of those strong fingers called back to her mind the picture of Oliver Jordan as he had been, a kingly man among men.  Tears came into the eyes of Marianne.

“But where are you going?” she asked him gently.  “And why do you never let me go with you, dear?”

“You?” he chuckled.  “Waste time driving out nowheres with an old codger like me?  I didn’t give you all that schooling to have you throw your life away doing things like that.  Don’t you bother about me, Marianne.  I’m just going to drift over yonder around Jackson Peak.  You see?”

“But who is there, and what is there?”

He merely rubbed his knuckles across his forehead and then shook his head.  “I dunno.  Nothing much.  It’s tolerable quiet, though.  And you get the smell of the pines the minute the trail starts climbing.  Sort of a lazy place to go, but then I’ve turned into a lazy man, honey.  Just sitting and thinking is about all I’m good for, or most like just the sitting without the thinking.  Why, Marianne, where’d you get them tears?”

She choked them back.

“I wish—­I wish—­” she began.

“That’s right,” he nodded.  “Keep right on wishing things.  That’s what I been doing lately.  And wishing things is better than doing them.  The way kids are, that’s the best way to be.  S’long, Marianne.”

She stepped back, trying valiantly to smile, and he raised a cautioning finger, chuckling:  “Look here, now, don’t you go to bothering your head about me.  Just save your worrying for this Perris gent.”

He clucked to the greys and their sudden start threw him violently against the back of the seat.

The promise of that start, however, was by no means borne out by the pace into which they immediately fell, which was a dog-trot executed with trailing hoofs that raised little wisps of dust at every stride.  She saw the lines slacken and hang loosely to every swing of the buckboard.  Had she not, ten years before, trembled at the sight of this same team dashing into the road, high-headed, eyes of fire, and the reins humming with the strength of Oliver Jordan’s pull?