She wrenched away and fell back, quivering, but she did not cry, only
asked in her most moving voice, "Who took care of Pierre--after I went
away and left him dead?"
Prosper got to his feet and stood with his arms folded, looking
wearily down at her. His mouth had fallen into rather cynical lines
and there were puckers at the corners of his eyes. "Oh, a big, fair
young man--a rosy boy-face, serious-looking, blue eyes."
Joan was startled and turned round. "It was Mr. Holliwell," she said,
in a wondering tone. "Did you talk with him? Did you tell him--?"
"No. Hardly." Prosper shook his head. "I found out what he had done
for your Pierre without asking unnecessary questions. I saw him, but
he did not see me."
"He'll be comin' to get me," said Joan. It was an entirely unemotional
statement of certainty.
Prosper pressed his lips into a line and narrowed his eyes upon her.
"Oh, he will?"
"Yes. He'll be takin' after me. He must 'a' ben scairt by somethin'
Pierre said in the town durin' their quarrel an' have come up after
him to look out what Pierre would be doin' to me.... I wisht he'd 'a'
come in time.... What must he be thinkin' of me now, to find Pierre
a-lyin' there dead, an' me gone! He'll be takin' after me to bring me
home."
Prosper would almost have questioned her then, his sharp face was
certainly at that moment the face of an inquisitor, a set of keen and
delicate instruments ready for probing, but so weary and childlike did
she look, so weary and childlike was her speech, that he forbore. What
did it matter, after all, what there was in her past? She had done
what she had done, been what she had been. If the fellow had branded
her for sin, why, she had suffered overmuch. Prosper admitted, that,
unbranded as to skin, he was scarcely fit to put his dirty civilized
soul under her clean and savage foot. Was the big, rosy chap her
lover? She had spoken of a quarrel between him and Pierre? But her
manner of speaking of him was scarcely in keeping with the thought,
rather it was the manner of a child-soul relying on the Shepherd who
would be "takin' after" some small, lost one. Well, he would have to
be a superman to find her here with no trails to follow and no fingers
to point. Pierre by now would have told his story--and Prosper knew
instinctively that he would tell it straight; whatever madness the
young savage might perpetrate under the influence of drink and
jealousy, he would hardly, with that harrowed face, be apt at
fabrications--they would be looking for Joan to come back, to go to
the town, to some neighboring ranch. They would make a search, but
winter would be against them with its teeth bared, a blizzard was on
its way. By the time they found her, thought Prosper,--and he quoted
one of Joan's quaint phrases to himself, smiling with radiance as he
did so,--"she won't be carin' to leave me." In his gay, little,
firelit room, he sat, stretched out, lank and long, in the low, deep,
red-lacquered chair, dozing through the long day, sipping strong
coffee, smoking, reading. He was singularly quiet and content. The
devil of disappointment and of thwarted desire that had wived him in
this carefully appointed hiding-place stood away a little from him and
that wizard imagination of his began to weave. By dusk, he was writing
furiously and there was a glow of rapture on his face.