The Branding Iron

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.