“Oh, go on with you,” whinnied the gorgon; but she left the room to make the coffee.

Judith’s eyes sought his.  “Why don’t you and Leander form a coalition for the overthrow of the enemy?” His voice had dropped a tone lower than in his parley with Mrs. Dax; it might have implied special devotion, or it might have implied but the passing tribute to a beautiful woman in a country where women were few—­the generic admiration of all men for all women, ephemerally specialized by place and circumstance.

But Judith, harassed at every turn, heart-sick with anxiety, had anticipated in Peter’s coming, if not a solution of her troubles, at least some evidence of sustaining sympathy, and was in no mood for resuscitating the perennial pleasantries anent Leander and his masterful lady.

The shrilling of the locusts emphasized their silence.  She spoke to him casually of his change of plan, but he turned the subject, and Judith let the matter drop.  She was too simple a woman to stoop to oblique measures for the gaining of her own ends.  If he was here to hunt down her brother, if he was here to see the Eastern woman at the Wetmore ranch—­well, “life was life,” to be taken or left.  Thus spoke the fatalism that was the heritage of her Indian blood.

The thought of Miss Colebrooke at Wetmore’s reminded her of a letter for Peter that had been brought that morning by one of the Wetmore cow-boys.

“I forgot—­there’s a letter for you.”  She went to the pigeon-holes on the wall that held the flotsam and jetsam of unclaimed mail, and brought him a square, blue linen envelope—­distinctly a lady’s letter.

Peter took it with rather a forced air of magnanimity, as if in neglecting to present it to him sooner she drew heavily on his reserve of patience.  Tearing open the envelope, he read it voraciously, read it to the exclusion of his surroundings, the world at large, and—­Judith.  He strode up and down the floor two or three times, and called to Leander, who was passing: 

“Dax, I must have that gray mare of yours right away.”  He went in the direction of the stable, without a second glance at the postmistress, and presently they saw him galloping off in the opposite direction from which he had come.  Mrs. Dax came in with a tray on which were a pot of coffee and sundry substantial delicacies.

“Where’s he gone?” she demanded, putting the tray down so hard that the coffee slopped.

“I dunno,” said Leander.  “He said he’d got to have the gray mare, saddled her hisself, and rode off like hell.”

Mrs. Dax looked at them all savagely for the explanation that they could not give.  In sending her out to make coffee she felt that Peter, whom she regarded in the light of a weakness, had taken advantage of her affections to dupe her in regard to his plans.

“Take them things back to the kitchen,” she commanded Leander.

Mary Carmichael involuntarily glanced at Judith; the fall of the leaf was in her cheek.