Page:Son of the wind.djvu/328

RV 310 inch of his way before him. Yet, as soon as he looked in the prosaic morning light he saw the first step to take.

He rose and searched among his clothes that were flung pell-mell in the valise, and brought out the message he had written to Esmeralda Charley a day or two before. He looked back at that point in past time as though over a distance of years. What had he meant with such words? An age of passions and events had rolled over him since. He put a match to the paper and threw it in the grate; then made haste to write out another message very plainly.

Unwashed, unshaven, with last night's dust and clay still upon him, he came out of the house into the cool, yellow light. The dawn looked fresh, undisturbed by the overcrowded events that were threatening the day. He made the descent of the hill at a good pace, and hailed the stage, as, plunging on its springs, sending up dust above the tree-tops, it came up from the dip of the creek bed. He mounted nimbly on the wheel, and inquired whether the driver would have time at the end of his journey to do a kindness for a stranger.

The autocrat on the high seat, looking the young man over, inquired what it might be.

It appeared to be this: to take a message to a half-breed, by name Esmeralda Charley. This Indian