"I wish I was a man," Edith sighed.
"I'm glad wishing can't make you one," Rawlins told her, so seriously it amounted to a rebuke for her profane desire.
"Well, I do," she insisted stubbornly. "But maybe I can help you anyway."
Whatever opportunity this offered for saying something gallant, Rawlins allowed to pass untouched, for sincerity has a slow tongue.
"Do you expect Mrs. Peck home to-night?" he asked, after the chance for saying something that he knew should have been said, and was expected to be said, had fallen as flat as a cake prematurely taken from the oven.
"She was headin' for Clemmons' range when I left her. If she don't hear anything of her sheep down there—and of course she'll not—I expect she'll turn back home. It may be morning before she gets here."
They discussed the probability of Mrs. Peck's invasion of the forbidden territory, Edith being of the opinon that the chances were all in Peck's favor. It was impossible for her to see anything tragic shaping up in the situation for Peck, the comedy outweighing everything else.
The moon was touching the hills when Rawlins left her, lighter of heart and stronger of hope than when he came. Danger was drawing away from him, he believed; peace was about to descend on his valley, where the price it had cost him already was marked by the brown splotch in the white earth before his door.
