Horton himself had seen small reason for a growth of hope in these
months, but he, like Lescott, felt that the matter must come to issue,
and he was not of that type which shrinks from putting to the touch a
question of vital consequence. He knew that her happiness as well as
his own was in the balance. He was not embittered or deluded, as a
narrower man might have been, into the fallacy that her treatment of
him denoted fickleness. Adrienne was merely running the boundary line
that separates deep friendship from love, a boundary which is often
confusing. When she had finally staked out the disputed frontier, it
would never again be questioned. But on which side he would find
himself, he did not know.
At Hixon, they found that deceptive air of serenity which made the
history of less than three months ago seem paradoxical and
fantastically unreal. Only about the court-house square where numerous
small holes in frame walls told of fusillades, and in the interior of
the building itself where the woodwork was scarred and torn, and the
plaster freshly patched, did they find grimly reminiscent evidence.
Samson had not met them at the town, because he wished their first
impressions of his people to reach them uninfluenced by his escort. It
was a form of the mountain pride--an honest resolve to soften nothing,
and make no apologies. But they found arrangements made for horses and
saddlebags, and the girl discovered that for her had been provided a
mount as evenly gaited as any in her own stables.
When she and her two companions came out to the hotel porch to start,
they found a guide waiting, who said he was instructed to take them as
far as the ridge, where the Sheriff himself would be waiting, and the
cavalcade struck into the hills. Men at whose houses they paused to ask
a dipper of water, or to make an inquiry, gravely advised that they
"had better light, and stay all night." In the coloring forests,
squirrels scampered and scurried out of sight, and here and there on
the tall slopes they saw shy-looking children regarding them with
inquisitive eyes.
The guide led them silently, gazing in frank amazement, though
deferential politeness, at this girl in corduroys, who rode cross-
saddle, and rode so well. Yet, it was evident that he would have
preferred talking had not diffidence restrained him. He was a young man
and rather handsome in a shaggy, unkempt way. Across one cheek ran a
long scar still red, and the girl, looking into his clear, intelligent
eyes, wondered what that scar stood for. Adrienne had the power of
melting masculine diffidence, and her smile as she rode at his side,
and asked, "What is your name?" brought an answering smile to his grim
lips.