Myra Willard blushed as she answered sadly, "Yes, I know that accidents have happened. I will talk with Sibyl; and will you not speak to her too? She loves you so, and is always guided by your wishes. A little word or two from you would be an added safeguard."
"Sure I'll talk to her," said the Ranger, heartily--rising and whistling to the chestnut. "But look here, Myra,"--he said, pausing with his foot in the stirrup,--"the girl must have her head, you know. We don't want to put her in the notion that every man in the world is a villain laying for a chance to do her harm. There _are_ clean fellows--a few--and it will do Sibyl good to meet that kind." He swung himself lightly into the saddle.
The woman smiled; "Sibyl could not think that all men are evil, after knowing her father and you, Mr. Oakley."
The Ranger laughed as he turned Max toward the opening in the cedar thicket. "Will was what God and Nelly made him, Myra; and I--if I'm fairly decent it's because Mary took me in hand in time. Men are mostly what you women make 'em, anyway, I reckon."
"Don't forget that you and Mrs. Oakley are coming for supper to-morrow," she called after him.
"No danger of our forgetting that," he answered. "Adios!" And the chestnut loped easily out of the yard.
Myra Willard kept her place on the porch until the sound of the horse's galloping feet died away down the canyon. But, as she listened to the vanishing sound of the Ranger's going, her eyes were looking far away--as though his words had aroused in her heart memories of days long past. When the last echo had lost itself in the thin mountain air, she went into the house.
Standing before the small mirror that served--in the rude, almost camp-like furnishings of the house--for both herself and Sibyl, she studied the face reflected there--turning her head slowly, as if comparing the beautiful unmarked side with the other that was so hideously disfigured. For some time she stood there, unflinchingly giving herself to the torture of this contemplation of her ruined loveliness; drinking to its bitter dregs the sorrowful cup of her secret memories; until, as though she could bear no more, she drew back--her eyes wide with pain and horror, her marred features twisted grotesquely in an agony of mental suffering. With a pitiful moan she sank upon her knees in prayer.