The buckboard jolted slowly down the road and swung out of sight, but
Marianne Jordan remained for long moments, staring after her father.
Every time they passed through one of these interviews--and today's
talk had been longer than most--she always felt that she had been pushed
a little farther away from him. At the very time of his life when his
daughter should have become a comfort to him, Oliver Jordan withdrew
himself more and more from the world, and she could not but feel that
his evening drives through the silences of the hill were dearer and
closer to him than his daughter. The buckboard reappeared, lurching up a
farther knoll, and then rolled out of sight to be seen no more. And
Marianne felt again, what she had often felt before, seeing her father
drive away in this fashion, that some day Oliver Jordan would never come
back from the hills.

A moment later half a dozen of the cowpunchers came into view with the
unmistakable form of Lew Hervey in the lead. He was a big-looking man in
the saddle and he showed himself to the greatest advantage by riding
rigidly erect with his head thrown a little back, so that the loose brim
of his sombrero was continually in play about his face. For all her
dislike of him she could not but admit that he was the beau ideal of the
fine horseman. The dominant leader showed in every line and it was no
wonder that the cowpunchers feared and respected him. Besides, there
were many tales of his prowess with rifle and revolver to make him stand
out in bolder relief.

She saw the riders disappear in the direction of the corrals and then
turned back towards the house. Unquestionably it was to avoid sight of
his men returning from their day's work that Oliver Jordan usually drove
off at this time of the day; it brought home to him too keenly the many
times when he himself had ridden back by the side of Lew Hervey from a