Page:Son of the wind.djvu/410

RV 392 gotten what he was saying. He tried to gather his wits together and go on with it, but one thought stood large before him and blotted out everything else. A question was rising in his mind that had nothing to do with the business in hand, yet he felt in spite of himself it was on his lips. "What did she do?" he said.

The half-breed was holding a match to the end of his cigarette. "She came around here where we are standing now."

"Yes, of course, I know—but did she go inside? Did she try to get near him? Did she try to—to—" The man made a scornful negative motion of the head. "She stood like this." He stiffened himself and held himself incredibly still. "She looked at him as long as this"—he waved the match back and forth once in the air. "Then she mourned."

"Mourned?"

"Like women for the dead," Esmeralda Charley explained, throwing the match away. "She put her face there where your hand is now. She covered her head and mourned."

Carron stared a moment at that spot to which the half-breed pointed, the place where his hand lay on the rail; suddenly he let go as if the wood had burned him. "Stiffen that top timber," he said sharply. "It is weak." Some emotion that he couldn't account