“You’re a very kind soul, Vance.
I never knew it before. I’m appreciating
it now almost too late. But what I have done shall
stand!”
“But, my dear, the pain—is it worth—”
“It means that my life is a wreck and a ruin,
Vance. But I’ll stand by what I’ve
done. I won’t give way to the extent of
a single scruple.”
And the long, bitter silence which was to last so
many days at the Cornish ranch began. And still
they did not look into one another’s eyes.
As for Vance, he did not wish to. He was seeing
a bright future. Not long to wait; after this
blow she would go swiftly to her grave.
He had barely reached that conclusion when the door
opened again. Terry stood before them in the
old, loose, disreputable clothes of a cow-puncher.
The big sombrero swung in his hand. The heavy
Colt dragged down in its holster over his right hip.
His tanned face was drawn and stern.
“I won’t keep you more than a moment,”
he said. “I’m leaving. And I’m
leaving with nothing of yours. I’ve already
taken too much. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll
never forgive myself for taking your charity these
twenty-four years. For what you’ve spent
maybe I can pay you back one of these days, in money.
But for all the time and—patience—you’ve
spent on me I can never repay you. I know that.
At least, here’s where I stop piling up a debt.
These clothes and this gun come out of the money I
made punching cows last year. Outside I’ve
got El Sangre saddled with a saddle I bought out of
the same money. They’re my start in life,
the clothes I’ve got on and the gun and the
horse and the saddle. So I’m starting clean—Miss
Cornish!”
Vance saw his sister wince under that name from the
lips of Terry. But she did not speak.
“There’ll be no return,” said Terence
sadly. “My trail is an out trail.
Good-by again.” And so he was gone.
Down the Bear Creek road Terence Hollis rode as he
had never ridden before. To be sure, it was not
the first time that El Sangre had stretched to the
full his mighty strength, but on those other occasions
he had fought the burst of speed, straining back in
groaning stirrup leathers, with his full weight wresting
at the bit. Now he let the rein play to such
a point that he was barely keeping the power of the
stallion in touch. He lightened his weight as
only a fine horseman can do, shifting a few vital
inches forward, and with the burden falling more over
his withers, El Sangre fled like a racer down the valley.
Not that he was fully extended. His head was
not stretched out as a cow-pony’s head is stretched
when he runs; he held it rather high, as though he
carried in his big heart a reserve strength ready to
be called on for any emergency. For all that,
it was running such as Terry had never known.
The wind became a blast, jerking the brim of his sombrero
up and whistling in his hair. He was letting
the shame, the grief, the thousand regrets of that
parting with Aunt Elizabeth be blown out of his soul.
His mind was a whirl; the thoughts became blurs.
As a matter of fact, Terry was being reborn.
