a long trail and a tolerable lonely one, most like."

After that she settled down to wait with as great a feeling of security
as though the mares were already safely back in the corral. If he came,
the death-warrant of Alcatraz was as good as signed. But when the third
day of waiting ended without bringing Shorty and Perris, as it should
have done, the "if" began to assume greater proportions, and by late
afternoon of the fourth day she had made up her mind that Perris was
gone from Glosterville and that Shorty was on a wild goose chase after
him. So great was her gloom that even her father, usually blind to all
emotions around him, delayed a moment after he had been helped into his
buckboard and stared thoughtfully down at her.

The habit had grown on Oliver Jordan of late. When the westering sun
lost most of its heat and threw slant shadows and a yellow light over
the mountains, Oliver would have a pair of ancient greys, patient as
burros and hardly faster, hitched to a buckboard and then drive off into
the evening and perhaps, long after the dinner hour. Only foul weather
kept him in from these lonely jaunts on which he never took a companion.
To Marianne they were a never-ending source of wonder and sorrow, for
she saw her father slowly withdrawing himself from the life about him
and dwelling in a gentle, uninterrupted melancholy. She met his stare,
on this evening, with eyes clouded with tears.

Truly he had aged wonderfully in the past years.

The accident which robbed him of his physical freedom seemed, at the
same time, to destroy all spirit of youth. Whether walking or sitting he
was bowed. His eyes were dull. Beside his mouth and between his eyes
deep lines gave a sad dignity to his expression. And though, as his
cowpunchers swore, his hand was as swift to draw a gun as ever and his
eye as steady on a target, he had gradually lost interest in even his
revolvers. Indeed, what real interest remained to him in the world,
Marianne was unable to tell. He lived and moved as one in a dream
surrounded by a world of dreams. His eyes were dull from looking into
the dim distance of strange thoughts, and the smile which was rarely
away from his lips was rather whimsically enduring than a sign of mirth.

But as he looked down at her from the buckboard, Marianne saw his
expression clear to awareness of her. He even reached out and rested his
hand on her head so that her face was tilted up to him.

"Honey," he said, "