The girl could do nothing but trust in the word that was
already law to her. He rode beside her murmuring reassurances and
watching her pale profile. Her head hung low on her breast, her hat
casting a slant of shadow to her chin. Her eyes looked gloomily
forward, sometimes as his words touched a latent chord of hope, turning
quickly upon him and enveloping him in a look of pathetic trust.
At the evening halt she ate nothing, sitting in a muse against the
wagon wheel. Presently she put her plate down and, mounting on the
axle, scanned the way they had come. She could see the rock, rising
like the clumsy form of a dismantled galleon from the waters of a
darkling sea. For a space she stood, her hand arched above her eyes,
then snatched the kerchief from her neck and, straining an arm aloft,
waved it. The white and scarlet rag flapped with a languid motion, an
infinitesimal flutter between the blaze of the sky and the purpling
levels of the earth. Her arm dropped, her signal fallen futile on the
plain's ironic indifference.
During the next day's march she constantly looked back, and several
times halted, her hand demanding silence as if she were listening for
pursuing footsteps.
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