"Listen, Lucy," he cried, "I will not go unless you tell me--and now may I go?"
A smile came over Lucy's face but she did not speak her thoughts.
"If you will stay for my sake," she said, "I shall be very happy, but I will not hold you against your will. Oh, Rufus, Rufus!" she cried, suddenly holding out her hands, "can't you understand? I can't set myself against you, and yet--think what it is to be a woman!" She rose up and stood before him, the soft light glowing in her eyes, and Hardy stepped forward to meet her; but in that moment a drumming of hoofs echoed through the doorway, there was a rush of horsemen leaning forward as they rode, and then Jefferson Creede thundered by, glancing back as he spurred down the cañon to meet the sheep.
"My God!" whispered Hardy, following his flight with startled eyes, and as the rout of cowboys flashed up over the top of Lookout Point and were gone he bowed his head in silence.
"Lucy," he said, at last, "my mind has been far away. I--I have not seen what was before me, and I shall always be the loser. But look--I have two friends in all the world, you and Jeff, and you are the dearer by far. But you could see as Jeff went by that he was mad. What he will do at the river I can only guess; he is crazy, and a crazy man will do anything. But if I am with him I can hold him back--will you let me go?" He held out his hands and as Lucy took them she saw for the first time in his shy eyes--love. For a moment she gazed at him wistfully, but her heart never faltered. Whatever his will might be she would never oppose it, now that she had his love.
"Yes, Rufus," she said, "you may go, but remember--me."
The rush and thunder of cow ponies as they hammered over the trail and plunged down through the rocks and trees had hardly lost its echoes in the cliffs when, with a flash of color and a dainty pattering of hoofs, Chapuli came flying over the top of Lookout Point and dashed up the river after them. The cowmen had left their horses in the deep ravine at the end of the _malpai_ bluffs and were already crouched behind the rampart of the rim rocks as close as Indian fighters, each by some loophole in the blackened _malpai_, with a rifle in his hand. As Hardy crept in from behind, Jeff Creede motioned him to a place at his side greeting him at the same time with a broad grin.