The buckboard jolted slowly down the road and swung out of sight, but Marianne Jordan remained for long moments, staring after her father.  Every time they passed through one of these interviews—­and today’s talk had been longer than most—­she always felt that she had been pushed a little farther away from him.  At the very time of his life when his daughter should have become a comfort to him, Oliver Jordan withdrew himself more and more from the world, and she could not but feel that his evening drives through the silences of the hill were dearer and closer to him than his daughter.  The buckboard reappeared, lurching up a farther knoll, and then rolled out of sight to be seen no more.  And Marianne felt again, what she had often felt before, seeing her father drive away in this fashion, that some day Oliver Jordan would never come back from the hills.

A moment later half a dozen of the cowpunchers came into view with the unmistakable form of Lew Hervey in the lead.  He was a big-looking man in the saddle and he showed himself to the greatest advantage by riding rigidly erect with his head thrown a little back, so that the loose brim of his sombrero was continually in play about his face.  For all her dislike of him she could not but admit that he was the beau ideal of the fine horseman.  The dominant leader showed in every line and it was no wonder that the cowpunchers feared and respected him.  Besides, there were many tales of his prowess with rifle and revolver to make him stand out in bolder relief.

She saw the riders disappear in the direction of the corrals and then turned back towards the house.  Unquestionably it was to avoid sight of his men returning from their day’s work that Oliver Jordan usually drove off at this time of the day; it brought home to him too keenly the many times when he himself had ridden back by the side of Lew Hervey from a day of galloping in the wind; it crushed him with a sense of the impotence into which his life had fallen.  Indeed, unless some vital change came, her father must soon mourn himself into a grave.  For the first time Marianne clearly perceived this.  Oliver Jordan was wasting for grief over his lost freedom just as some youthful lover might decline because of the death of his mistress.  The shock of this perception brought Marianne to a halt.  When she looked up Shorty and Red Perris were not a hundred yards away, swinging along at a steady lope!

All sad thoughts were whisked from her mind as a gust whirls dead leaves away and shows the green grass beneath, newly growing.  How it lifted her heart to see him.  But she looked down, with a cold falling of gloom, at her blue gingham dress.  That was not as she wished to appear.  She could be in her riding costume, with the rather mannish blouse and loosely tied cravat, spurs on her boots and quirt in her hand as became the mistress and ruling force of a big ranch.  Then she received sudden and convincing proof that mere outward appearances meant nothing in the life of Red Jim Perris.  He took off his hat and swung it in greeting.  There was a white flash of his teeth as he laughed, a red flash of his amazing hair in the sunset light.  Then he was pulling up and swinging down to the ground.  He came to meet her with his hat dangling in one hand and the other extended.