e
ceremony; had ignored her entirely. When the dawn came she had heard him
talking to the parson, but could not catch their words. Later she had
mounted her pony and had ridden away through the sunshine of the morning.
She had been married--it was her wedding day.

When she had reached the crest of a long rise after her departure from the
cabin she had halted her pony to look back, hoping that it all might have
been a dream. But it had not been a dream. There was the dense wood, the
clearing, and the cabin. Beside them was the river. And there, riding
slowly away over the narrow trail which she had traveled the night before,
was the parson--she could see his gray beard in the white sunlight. Dry
eyed, she had turned from the scene. A little later, turning again, she
saw the parson fade into the horizon. That, she knew, was the last she
would ever see of him. He had gone out of her life forever--the desert had
swallowed him up.

But the picture was still vivid; she had seen it during every waking
moment of the month that she had been at the Double R ranch; it was before
her every night in her dreams. It would not fade.

She knew that the other picture was beautiful--the picture of this world
into which she had ridden so confidently, yet she was afraid to dwell upon
it for fear that its beauty would seem to mock her. For had not nature
conspired against her? Yet she knew that she alone was to blame--she,
obstinate, willful, heedless. Had not her father warned her? "Wait," he
had said, and the words flamed before her eyes--"wait until I go. Wait a
month. The West is a new country; anything, everything, can happen to you
out there--alone."

"Nothing can happen," had been her reply. "I will go straight from Lazette
to the Double R. See that you telegraph instructions to Duncan to meet me.
It will be a change; I am tired of the East and impatient to be away from
it."

Well, she had found a change. What would her father say when he heard of
it--of her marriage to a cowboy, an unprincipled scoundrel? What could he
say? The marriage could be annulled, of course! it was not legal, could
not be legal. No law could be drawn which would recognize a marriage of
that character, and she knew that she had only to tell her father to have
the machinery of the law set in motion. Could she tell him? Could she bear
his reproaches, his pity, after her heedlessness?

What would her friends say when they heard of it--as they must hear if