’The dear child is high-strung, and Heaven knows she has been through enough to upset anyone,’ she said condoningly.  Then, ’Mr. Carr and you, Alan, don’t seem to be hungry any more.  I would like a word with Mr. Longstreet, and if you two went out to Helen perhaps you might soothe her.  Remember she is only a child after all.’

Glad of the excuse to be gone, both men rose.  As they went out they saw how Sanchia was already leaning toward Longstreet, how her hand had again found its way to his arm.  Then they lost sight of her and saw Helen standing upon the cliff edge looking off to the lowlands of the south.  In silence they joined her.

‘I don’t know whether I love this country or hate it most,’ Helen said without withdrawing her troubled eyes from the expanse of Desert Valley.  The sun was down, the distances were veiled in tender shades, pale greens of the meadowlands, dusky greys of the hills.  ’If it were only all like that; if there were only the glorious valley and the peace of it instead of this hideous life up here!’

It was in Alan Howard’s heart to cry out to her, ’Come down into the peace of it; it is all mine.  Come down to live there with me.’  It may have been in John Carr’s heart to whisper:  ’It is mine until the last cent is paid on it; if you love it so, there may still be the way to get it back for you.’  But neither man spoke his thought.  The three stood close together, the girl with troubled eyes standing between the two friends, and all of their eyes searched into the mystery of the coming dusk.

From the cabin came the sound of a laugh.  It was Longstreet’s, and it was like a pleased child’s.

Chapter XX

Two Friends and a Girl

Howard and Carr rode down into the darkening valley side by side.  The silence of the coming dusk was no deeper than that silence which had crept about them while the three stood upon the cliff’s edge.  Longstreet’s laugh had whipped up the colour into Helen’s cheeks and had lighted a battle fire in her eyes.  She had whisked away from them and gone straight back to the cabin, meaning to save her father from his own artlessness and from the snare of a designing widow.  She had remembered to call out a breathless ‘Good-night’ without turning her head.  They had taken their dismissal together, understanding Helen’s tortured mood.  Each man grave and taciturn, like two automatons they buckled on their spurs, mounted and reined toward the trail.

Then Howard had said merely:  ’Come down to the ranch-house, John.  I want to talk with you.’  And Carr had nodded and acquiesced.  Thereafter they were silent again for a long time.

The coming of night is a time of vague veilings, of grotesque transformations, of remoulding and steeping in new dyes.  Matter-of-fact objects, clear-cut during the day, assume fantastic shapes; a bush may appear a crouching mountain cat; a rock may masquerade as a mastodon.  This is an hour of uncertainties.  And doubtings and questionings and uncertainties were other shadow shapes thronging the demesnes of two men’s souls.  Silence and dim dusk without, dim dusk and silence within.