The man stood on the platform, and watched her as he whirled away—­a little brown girl on a little brown horse, so stanch and firm and stubborn and good.  Her eyes were dear, and her lips as she smiled; and her hand was beautiful as it waved him good-by.  She was dear, dear, dear!  Why had he not known it?  Why had he left her?  Yet how could he stay?  His mother was dying perhaps.  He must not fail her in what might be her last summons.  Life and death were pulling at his heart, tearing him asunder.

The vision of the little brown girl and the little brown horse blurred and faded.  He tried to look, but could not see.  He brought his eyes to nearer vision to fix their focus for another look, and straight before him whirled a shackly old saloon, rough and tumble, its character apparent from the men who were grouped about its doorway and from the barrels and kegs in profusion outside.  From the doorway issued four men, wiping their mouths and shouting hilariously.  Four horses stood tied to a fence near by.  They were so instantly passed, and so vaguely seen, that he could not be sure in the least, but those four men reminded him strongly of the four who had passed the schoolhouse on Sunday.

He shuddered, and looked back.  The little brown horse and the little brown girl were one with the little brown station so far away, and presently the saloon and men were blotted out in one blur of green and brown and yellow.

He looked to the ground in his despair.  He must go back.  He could not leave her in such peril.  She was his to care for by all the rights of manhood and womanhood.  She had been put in his way.  It was his duty.

But the ground whirled by under his madness, and showed him plainly that to jump off would be instant death.  Then the thought of his mother came again, and the girl’s words, “I am nothing to you, you know.”

The train whirled its way between two mountains and the valley, and the green and brown and yellow blur were gone from sight.  He felt as if he had just seen the coffin close over the girl’s sweet face, and he had done it.

By and by he crawled into the car, pulled his slouch hat down over his eyes, and settled down in a seat; but all the time he was trying to see over again that old saloon and those four men, and to make out their passing identity.  Sometimes the agony of thinking it all over, and trying to make out whether those men had been the pursuers, made him feel frantic; and it seemed as if he must pull the bell-cord, and make the train stop, and get off to walk back.  Then the utter hopelessness of ever finding her would come over him, and he would settle back in his seat again and try to sleep.  But the least drowsiness would bring a vision of the girl galloping alone over the prairie with the four men in full pursuit behind.  “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth!” the car-wheels seemed to say.