But sometimes in her sleep Joan would start and moan feeling the touch
of the white-hot iron on her shoulder. Her hatred of Pierre's cruelty,
her resolution to be done with him forever, must have vividly renewed
itself in those dreams, for she would cling to Prosper like a
frightened child, and wake, trembling, happy to find herself safe in
his arms.
So they lived their spring. Wen Ho, the silent and inscrutable, went
out of the valley for provisions, and during his absence Joan queened
it in the kitchen. She was learning to laugh, to see the absurd,
delightful twists of daily living, to mock Prosper's oddities as he
mocked hers. She was learning to be a comrade and she was learning
better speech and more exquisite ways. It was inevitable that she
should learn. Prosper, in these days, spent his whole soul upon her,
fed her with music and delight, and he trained her to sing her sagas so
that every day her voice gained in power and flexible sweetness. She
would sing, since he told her to, her voice beating its wings against
the walls of the house or ringing down the cañon in untrammeled
flight. Prosper was lost in wonder of her, in a passionate admiration
for his own handiwork. He was making, here in this God-forsaken
solitude, a thing of marvel; what he was making surely justified the
means. Joan's laughable simplicity and directness were the same; they
were part of her essence; no civilizing could confuse or disturb them;
but she changed, her brain grew, it absorbed material, it attempted
adventures. Nowadays Joan sometimes argued, and this filled Prosper
with delight, so quaint and logical she was and so skillful.
They were reading out under the firs by the green lip of the lake,
when Wen Ho led his pack-horse up the trail. He had been gone a month,
for Prosper had sent him out of the valley to a distant town for his
supplies. He didn't want the little frontier place to prick up its
ears. Wen Ho had ridden by a secret trail back over the range; he had
not passed even the ranger station on his way. He called out, and, in
the midst of a sentence Joan was reading, Prosper started up.
Joan looked at him smiling. "You're as easily turned away from
learning as a boy," she began, and faltered when she saw his face. It
was turned eagerly toward the climbing horses, toward the pack, and it
was sharp and keen with detached interest, an excitement that had
nothing, nothing in the world to do with her.