Toward morning, dawn feeling with white fingers through the pine
boughs into her uncurtained window, Joan stopped her weeping and stood
up. She was very tired and felt as though all the hardness and
strength had been beaten from her heart. She opened her door and
looked at pale stars and a still, slowly brightening world. In a
hollow below the pines a stream ran and poured its hoarse, hurrying
voice into the silence. Joan bent under the branches, undressed and
bathed. The icy water shocked life back into her spirit. She began to
tingle and to glow. In spite of herself she felt happier. She had been
stony for so long, neither sorrowful nor glad; now, after the night of
sharp pain, she was aware of the gladness of morning. She came up from
her plunge, glowing and beautiful, with loose, wet hair.
In the corral the men were watering their teams; above them on the
edge of a mesa, against the rosy sky, the other ponies, out all night
on the range, were trooping, driven by a cowboy who darted here and
there on his nimble pony, giving shrill cries. In the clear air every
syllable was sharp to the ear, every tint and line sharp to the eye.
It was beautiful, very beautiful, and it was near and dear to her,
native to her--this loveliness of quick action, of inarticulate
calling to dumb beasts, of work, of simple, often repeated beginnings.
She was glad that she was working with her hands. She twisted up her
hair and went over to the ranch-house where she began soberly and
thankfully to light her kitchen fire.
It was after breakfast, two or three mornings later, when a stranger
on a chestnut pony rode into Yarnall's ranch, tied his pony to a tree,
and, striding across the cobbled square, came to knock at the office
door. At the moment, Yarnall, on the other side of the house, was
saying farewell to his guests, and helping the men pile the baggage
into the two-seated wagon, so this other visitor, getting no answer to
his knock, turned and looked about the court. He did not, it was
evident, mind waiting. It was to be surmised from the look of him that
he was used to it; patient and not to be discouraged by delay. He was
a very brown young man of quite astounding beauty and his face had
been schooled to keenness and restraint. He was well-dressed, very
clean, an outdoor man, a rider, but a man who had, in some sense,
arrived. He had the inimitable stamp of achievement. He had been hard
driven--the look of that, too, was there; he had been driven to more
than ordinary effort. One of the men, seeing him, walked over and
spoke respectfully.