Then, far down the road, consoling, familiar, she heard the soft pit-a-pat of hoofs. The sound neared, swelled, drummed in a crescendo that seemed to beat in her heart. Detaching itself suddenly from the shadow, as if of its tenuous substance, there appeared the vague form of a man in the saddle, pliant-waisted, broad-shouldered. A singular panic possessed her; she drew aside behind the wall and peered, her hands upon her breast. With a rattle of stone and a spark the horse stopped there in the darkness in front. The shadowy rider seemed to turn in the saddle; she felt his eyes scrutinising the darkened facade, the lightless windows. She panted. The horse champed resoundingly; her lips parted as if to speak.
Then, very distinct in the silence, she heard the decided whirr of a quirt. The form in the saddle bent forward; the horse rose in a jump. For a second the shadow of horse and man rose and fell, then it plunged into the darkness of which it seemed a part. The drumming of hoofs sounded down the road, farther, fainter, became a mere vibration, ceased.
But she stood there listening long after sound had died. And when she moved off toward her little cot, it was very wearily, and upon it she collapsed very suddenly.
She knew what was the matter with her now. She was lonely; God, how lonely!
And thus as a shadow, flitting, mysterious, almost uncorporeal, she was to know him for a long time. It might be during the day, at school; her eyes, straying out of the open door, saw him cross the plaza to the rapid pace of his bay pony, erect beneath the leaden downpour of heat, his sombrero firm down upon his eyes, his waist giving pliantly to the swing of the saddle. He slid off with what seemed to her singular speed, like a being unreal, elusive, legendary; he was across the plaza ere her eyes were fairly fixed upon him, was disappearing along the palm-lined road into the wilderness, into the bosom of the mountain, seeming to await him, dark, brooding, inscrutable. And when the red dot of the saddle-blanket had lost itself into the venomous green of the distance, she would turn, a little listlessly, to her class.
"Come, children, we will sing," she would say.
And they sang, in their low, weird voices, their plaintive modification of some old home song. "How sadly they sing," she murmured; "how sad it all is."
