I wonder if you know. I wonder if you
are ready to hear, now."
She looked him frankly in the eyes as she answered, "Yes, I know what you
want to tell me. But don't, don't tell me here." She shuddered, and the
man remembering the dead body that lay at the foot of the cliff,
understood. "Wait," she said, "until we are home."
"And you will come to me when you are ready? When you want me to tell
you?" he said.
"Yes," she answered softly, "I will go to you when I am ready."
* * * * *
At the cabin in the gulch, the girl hastened to prepare a substantial
meal. There was no one, now, to fear that the smoke would be seen. Later,
with cedar boughs and blankets, she made a bed for him on the floor near
the fire-place. When he would have helped her she forbade him; saying that
he was her guest and that he must rest to be ready for the homeward trip.
Softly, the day slipped away over the mountain peaks and ridges that shut
them in. Softly, the darkness of the night settled down. In the rude
little hut, in the lonely gulch, the man and the woman whose lives were
flowing together as two converging streams, sat by the fire, where, the
night before, the convict had told that girl his story.
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