off the train. When she had turned out the lamp and crept
wearily into bed she knew what it was to be utterly spent. She
was too tired to move a finger. But her brain whirled.

She had at first no control over it, and a thousand thronging
sensations came and went and recurred with little logical
relation. There were the roar of the train; the feeling of being
lost; the sound of pounding hoofs; a picture of her brother's
face as she had last seen it five years before; a long, dim line
of lights; the jingle of silver spurs; night, wind, darkness,
stars. Then the gloomy station, the shadowy blanketed Mexican,
the empty room, the dim lights across the square, the tramp of
the dancers and vacant laughs and discordant music, the door
flung wide and the entrance of the cowboy. She did not recall
how he had looked or what he had done. And the next instant she
saw him cool, smiling, devilish--saw him in violence; the next
his bigness, his apparel, his physical being were vague as
outlines in a dream. The white face of the padre flashed along in
the train of thought, and it brought the same dull, half-blind,
indefinable state of mind subsequent to that last nerve-breaking
pistol-shot. That passed, and then clear and vivid rose memories
of the rest that had happened--strange voices betraying fury of
men, a deadened report, a moan of mortal pain, a woman's poignant
cry. And Madeline saw the girl's great tragic eyes and the wild
flight of the big horse into the blackness, and the dark,
stalking figure of the silent cowboy, and the white stars that
seemed to look down remorselessly.

This tide of memory rolled over Madeline again and again, and
gradually lost its power and faded. All distress left her, and