The creaking
of the wagon came faint from a wake of shadowy trail.
"You've done it for weeks. Before you knew. Before you lied to your
father when he tried to make you marry David."
She dropped the reins and clinched her hands against her breast, a
movement of repression and also of pleading to anything that would
protect her, any force that would give her strength to fight, not the
man alone, but herself. But the will was not within her. The desert
grew dim, the faint sounds from the wagon faded. Like a charmed bird,
staring straight before it, mute and enthralled, she rocked lightly to
left and right, and then swayed toward him.
The horse, feeling the dropped rein, stopped, jerking its neck forward
in the luxury of rest, its companion coming to a standstill beside it.
Courant raised himself in his saddle and gathered her in an embrace
that crushed her against his bony frame, then pressed against her face
with his, till he pushed it upward and could see it, white, with closed
eyes, on his shoulder. He bent till his long hair mingled with hers
and laid his lips on her mouth with the clutch of a bee on a flower.
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