erself remember the details of that
night. We like to persuade ourselves that by some miraculous chance,
some trickery of fate, good may come in a vague somehow out of evil;
contrary to the proofs from the beginning of time that good fruit never
yet grew from evil seed. The girl was too honest for such fetish
faith. She could not turn up the whites of her eyes in a pious
resignation that it had been the will of God evil should triumph. So
she shut out the details of the horror from mind's memory and set her
teeth, knowing well that when lewd horrors triumph it is not because
the God of the Universe is a fool but because the powers for right have
not fought valiant as the powers for evil.

She remembered the Ranger had tossed a revolver to the old frontiersman
and Matthews had gone tearing up the slippery clay of the Mesa road
ripping out oaths of his unregenerate days that he would have "the
scoundrels' scalps if he had to tear them off with his own hands."
Somehow, Wayland had headed the draggled horses round on the narrow Rim
Rock trail.

"Go down and break the news to his mother. I'll get the body," he had
said; and she had driven the buckboard down with her foot on the wheel
brake. Not a soul appeared around the Senator's place as she passed
the white square of fenced buildings. All the mosquito doors were
hooked. Everything looked deserted; branding irons lying in disorder
round the k'raal. The River had swollen too turbulent for fording and
she had crossed the white bridge--she remembered she had crossed at a
gallop contrary to the little notice tacked on the board railing.
Then, the horses steaming from rain had stopped in front of the Mission
gate and Mrs. Williams had come out "wondering about Fordie in the
storm." With her back to the waiting mother, Eleanor had spent an
unconscionable time tying the ponies, trying to control her own
trembling lips and threshing round for some way to tell the untenable.
She remembered the roil of the raging waters, the floating star
blossoms on the muddy swirl, the light sifting in beaten rain dust
through the silver pine needles, the curve and dip of the joyous
swallows. Then, she had followed the little white haired lady into the
Mission Parlor.

Almost hysterically, that saying of an old profane writer came to mind,
"God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb;" and all her inner being was
shouting in rebellion "Does He, Does He?" Then she shut the door. She
kne