"But of what use is all such planning when destiny wills otherwise? A trifling incident--the rolling of a horse in the mud--brought everything about my ears. Yet I believe it is for the best. Nor do I believe your discovery to have been a mere matter of chance. Probably you were led by a higher force than mere devotion to duty. Truth must have loyal servitors such as you if justice is to survive in this world. I am heartily glad that you persisted in your search. I feel more at ease in mind and body to-night than I have felt since the day of the tragedy. Now if you will excuse me a moment, I will make preparations for giving myself up to the authorities--perhaps to higher authorities than those at White Lodge."
Sargent stepped into the adjoining room as he finished talking. Helen did not raise her head from the table. Something in Sargent's final words roused Lowell's suspicion. He walked quickly into the room and found Sargent taking a revolver from the drawer of a desk. Lowell wrested the weapon from his grasp.
"That's the last thing in the world you should do," said the Indian agent, in a low voice. "There isn't a jury that will convict you. If it's expiation you seek, do you think that cowardly sort of expiation is going to bring anything but new unhappiness to _her_ out there?"
"No," said Sargent. "I give you my word this will not be attempted again."
Space meeting space--plains and sky welded into harmonies of blue and gray. Cloud shadows racing across billowy uplands, and sagebrush nodding in a breeze crisp and electric as only a breeze from our upper Western plateau can be. Distant mountains, with their allurements enhanced by the filmiest of purple veils. Bird song and the chattering of prairie dogs from the foreground merely intensifying the great, echoless silence of the plains.
Lowell and Helen from a ridge--_their_ ridge it was now!--watched the changes of the panorama. They had dismounted, and their horses were standing near at hand, reins trailing, and manes rising and falling with the undulations of the breeze. It was a month after Sargent's confession and his surrender as the slayer of the recluse of the Greek Letter Ranch. As Lowell had prophesied, Sargent's acquittal had been prompt. His story was corroborated by brief testimony from Lowell and Helen. Citizens crowded about him, after the jury had brought in its verdict of "Not guilty," and one of the first to congratulate him was Jim McFann, who had been acquitted when he came up for trial for slaying Talpers. The half-breed told Sargent of Talpers's plan to kill Helen.