"Come on," he said, almost roughly. "It's late enough already. Maybe they'll be starting directly. Here, Elia, you tell us just where Will's in hiding, and mind you don't miss anything."
It took barely five minutes for Elia to give the required directions again, which he did ungraciously enough. But Peter verified his account with the original story, and was satisfied.
Then the two men went out and saddled the horse. In three minutes Jim was in the saddle, and Peter gripped him by the hand.
"The good God'll help you out for this, Jim. So long."
As the horseman passed the hut Eve and Elia were standing before the closed door. Jim saw them, but he would not pause. However, his keen ears heard the whispered "God bless you" which the woman threw after him. And somehow he felt that nothing else in his life much mattered.
A few moments later Eve was at her gate, fumbling for the latch. Elia was at her side, looking out at the lights of the village. Suddenly he turned and raised his beautiful face to hers.
"Say, sis, you're a fule woman," he declared sharply. He was listening to the sounds of bustle down at the saloon. "Can't you hear? That's the boys. They've come in, and they're gettin' ready to start with Doc. If they get him--they'll hang him."
The terrified woman was staring down into his calm eyes.
"Oh, God, no! They can't! They won't! He's too good--too brave! God will never let them. It would be too cruel."
But Eve was fumbling again at the gate. Nor could the boy extract another word from her.
The blackness of night begins to stir. Ahead and above roll vague shadows, darkening, threatening, in the immensity of their wave-like shapes. Away behind the stars shine pitifully, for a dim gray light in the east heralds the coming of day. Slowly the shadows change from black to a faint gray, and their rolling becomes more pronounced. Now, with each passing moment, the eastern light grows, and the darkness of the west responds; now, too, the shadows show themselves for what they are. They stir and seethe like the churning of water nearly boiling, under the rising zephyrs of mountain air. They are the dense morning mists, a hazy curtain shutting out the mountain splendor beyond.
In less than half an hour a wonderful metamorphosis. A tinted fringe of cloud appears on the mists high up, and gives the impression of a beam of sunlight amidst the shadows. But no sun has broken the eastern sky-line, nor will it for another half-hour. Yet the light increases, and the swirling mists become a rosy cloudland, deep, ruddy, and exquisitely beautiful. The living fog rolls up, lifting, lifting, and every moment the picture grows in beauty and in its wonders of changing colors.