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.

Elizabeth--that was all he had of her. He did not know the rest of her

name, nor where she was going. He did not even know where she had come

from, just "Elizabeth" and "Montana." If anything happened lo her, he

would never know. Oh! why had he left her? Why had he not made her go

with him? In a case like that a man should assert his authority. But,

then, it was true he had none, and she had said she would run away. She

would have done it too. O, if it had been anything but sickness and

possible death at the other end--and his mother, his own little mother!

Nothing else would have kept him from staying to protect Elizabeth.

What a fool he had been! There were questions he might have asked, and

plans they might have made, all those beautiful days and those

moon-silvered nights. If any other man had done the same, he would have

thought him lacking mentally. But here he had maundered on, and never

found out the all-important things about her. Yet how did he know then how

important they were to be? It had seemed as if they had all the world

before them in the brilliant sunlight. How could he know that modern

improvements were to seize him in the midst of a prairie waste, and whirl

him off from her when he had just begun to know what she was, and to prize

her company as a most precious gift dropped down from heaven at his feet?




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