She
wondered a little at Priest's considering him, even temporarily, for
the stage; but confined her wonder to a species of compliment. David
sat beside Allen, while the latter, between silent spaces of suffering,
advised him of the individual characters and attributes of the horses
that might come under his guiding reins.
It seemed incredible that he should actually be seated in the driver's
place on the stage, swinging the heavy whip out over a team trotting
briskly into the early morning; but there he was. There were no
passengers, and the stage rode roughly over a small bridge of loose
boards beyond the village. He pulled the horses into a walk on the
mountain beyond, and was soon skirting the Gait farm, with its broad
fields, where he had lived as a mere boy.
David slipped his hand under the leather seat and felt the smooth
handle of the revolver. Then, on an even reach, he wrapped the reins
about the whipstock and publicly filled and lighted his clay pipe. The
smoke drifted back in a fragrant cloud; the stage moved forward
steadily and easily; folded in momentary forgetfulness, lifted by a
feeling of mature responsibility, he was almost happy. But he swung
down the mountain beyond his familiar valley, crossed a smaller ridge,
and turned into a stony sweep rising on the left.
It was Elbow Barren. In an instant a tide of bitterness, of passionate
regret, swept over him. He saw the Hatburns' house, a rectangular bleak
structure crowning a gray prominence, with the tender green of young
pole beans on one hand and a disorderly barn on the other, and a blue
plume of smoke rising from an unsteady stone chimney against an end of
the dwelling.
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