She hadn’t realized anything in life could be like that.

The red cliff across the valley was touched with the morning sun when she emerged from her green shelter, shyly conscious of the secret that lay unrevealed between them.

Their little camp was still in shadow. The last star disappeared as if a hand turned the lights low with a flash and revealed the morning.

She stood for an instant in the parting of the cedars, a hand on each side holding back the boughs, looking out from her retreat. The man saw her and waited with bared head. His eyes shone with a light of love he didn’t know was visible.

The very air about them seemed charged with an electrical current. The little commonplaces they spoke sank deep into each one’s heart and lingered to bless the future. Their eyes met many times and lingered shyly on more intimate ground than the day before, yet each had grown more silent.

He seated her on the canvas he’d arranged beside a patch of green grass and prepared to serve her like a queen. Indeed she wore a regal bearing, small and slender though she was, with her golden hair shining in the morning and her eyes bright.

Fried rabbits were cooking in the tiny saucepan, and corn bread was toasting before the fire on two sharp sticks. She found to her surprise she was hungry and the breakfast seemed delicious.

She was certain he didn’t know she’d guessed his secret. Her laugh rang out musically over the plain, and he watched her with delight, enjoying the companionship even more because of the barren days he was sure would come.

Finally he broke away from the pleasant lingering with an exclamation, for the sun was hastening upward and it was time for them to go. He packed away the things quickly, and she tried to help, but in her unfamiliarity only gave hindrance, with delicate hands that thrilled him as they came near with a plate, a cup, or a bit of corn bread left out.

Brownleigh lifted her onto his horse, and they started on their way. Yet not once in all the pleasant contact did he betray his secret, and Hazel began to feel the burden of what she’d heard weighing heavily upon her like a thing stolen she’d gladly replace but dared not. Sometimes, as they rode along, he talked quietly as the day before, pointing out some object of interest or telling her some remarkable story of his experiences. She wondered then if she hadn’t been mistaken—heard wrong, maybe, or made more of the words than she should have. She decided he couldn’t have meant her at all. And then turning suddenly, she’d find his eyes upon her with a light in them so tender, so yearning, that she dropped her own in confusion and felt her heart beating wildly with the pleasure and the pain of it.

About noon they came to a rain waterhole near three Indian hogans. Brownleigh explained to Hazel that he’d come this way, a little off the shortest trail, hoping to get another horse so they might travel faster and reach the railroad before sundown.

Her heart sank as he left her sitting on Billy under a cottonwood tree while he went to see if anyone was home and had a horse to spare. Of course she wanted to find her friends and relieve their anxiety as soon as possible. But something in the young missionary’s voice as he spoke of traveling faster seemed to build a wall between them. Their pleasant morning exchange appeared to be drawing rapidly to a close, with the wonderful sympathy and interest between them pushed out of her reach. She felt a choking sensation in her throat and longed to put her head down on Billy’s neck and sob.

She tried to reason with herself. Only a little over twenty-four hours ago she saw this stranger for the first time; yet her heart was bound to him in such a way that she dreaded their separation. How could it be? Such things weren’t real. People always laughed at sudden love as if it were impossible. But her heart told her they numbered their acquaintance not by mere hours. This man’s soul was revealed to her in that brief space of time as another’s might not be in years. She dreaded the ending of this companionship. It would be the end, of course. He said it, and she knew his words were true. His world wasn’t her world, more the pity! He’d never give up his world, and he said she was unfit for his. It was too true—this world of rough, uncouth strangers and wild, empty beauty.