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?