Then he dropped down at her side, looked at his watch in
the light of a flaring match carefully cupped in his hand, and lighted
his pipe.
"Nearly midnight," he told her.
Without replying she lay back against the slope of the mountain, closed
her eyes and relaxed, breathing deeply. Her chest expanded deeply to
the long indrawn breath which filled her lungs with the rare air. She
felt suddenly a little sleepy, dreaming longingly of the unutterable
content one could find in just going to sleep with the cliff-scarred
mountainside for couch.
She stirred and opened her eyes. Rod Norton, the sheriff of San Juan,
a man who a few brief hours ago had been unknown to her, his name
unfamiliar, sat two paces from her, smoking. She and this man of whom
she still knew rather less than nothing were alone in the world; just
the two of them lifted into the sky, separated by a dreary stretch of
desert lands from other men and women . . . bound together by a bit of
rope. She tried to see his face; the profile, more guessed than seen,
appeared to her fancy as unrelenting as the line of cliff just beyond
him, clear-cut against the sky.
Yet somehow . . . she did not definitely formulate the thought of which
she was at the time but dimly, vaguely conscious . . . she was glad
that she had come to San Juan.
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