Sara eyed Pen curiously. She had turned to look out over the desert distances so that Sara saw her profile clean cut against the sky. She was only a girl and yet she had lived through much. Sara looked at her noble head, high arched above her ears; at her short nose and full soft mouth, at her straight brow, all blending in an outline that was that of the thinker, infinitely sad in its intelligence.
"That was a very highbrow statement of yours, Pen," he said, less harshly than usual. "How did you come to think about these things?"
Pen turned to look at him. "Marrying you made me," she said. "I had to use my mind. I had no family. I had no talents. I had to teach myself a sense of proportion that would keep you from wrecking me. I wanted to get to look at myself as one human living with millions of other humans and not as Pen, the center of her own universe." Pen laughed a little wistfully. "Since I couldn't mother children of my own, naturally, I had to mother the world."
Sara grunted. "Huh! Who can say my life has been altogether a failure?"
Sudden tears sprang to Pen's eyes. "Why, Sara, what a dear thing to say! And I thought you would remove my hair because of Jim's message."
The sneer returned to Sara's voice. "You ask Jim if he ever heard of locking the barn too late? Tell him to bring on his 'armed guards.'"
Pen was startled. "Sara, what have you done?"
Sara laughed. "If you and Jim don't know, I'm not the proper one to tell you! One of your gentleman friends is outside, evidently waiting for you."
Pen looked out. Old Suma-theek was standing on the trail, arms folded, watching the tent patiently. He had had one interview with Sara soon after the crippled man had appeared at the dam. The talk had been desultory and in Pen's presence, but never after could the old Indian be induced to come into the tent.
"He like a broken backed snake, your buck," he had said calmly to Pen, whom he had obviously adored from the first.
Pen came down the trail to see what Suma-theek wanted. She knew there was no hurrying him, so she sat down on a stone and waited. Suma-theek seated himself beside her and rolled a cigarette. After he had smoked half of it, he said:
"Boss Still Jim, he heap sad in his heart."