The wind and rain had cleared the unfrequented suburb of any observant lounger, and the darkness, lit only by far-spaced, gusty lamps, hid her hastening figure.She had barely crossed the second street when she heard the quick clatter of hoofs behind her; a buggy drove up to the curbstone, and Poindexter leaped out.She entered quickly, but for a moment he still held the reins of the impatient horse."He's rather fresh," he said, eying her keenly;"are you sure you can manage him?"
"Give me the reins," she said simply.
He placed them in the two firm, well-shaped hands that reached from the depths of the vehicle, and was satisfied.Yet he lingered.
"It's rough work for a lone woman," he said, almost curtly."Ican't go with you, but, speak frankly, is there any man you know whom you can trust well enough to take? It's not too late yet;think a moment!"
He paused over the buttoning of the leather apron of the vehicle.
"No, there is none," answered the voice from the interior; "and it's better so.Is all ready?""One moment more." He had recovered his half-bantering manner.
"You HAVE a friend and countryman already with you, do you know?
Your horse is Blue Grass.Good night."
With these words ringing in her ears she began her journey.The horse, as if eager to maintain the reputation which his native district had given his race, as well as the race of the pretty woman behind him, leaped impatiently forward.But pulled together by the fine and firm fingers that seemed to guide rather than check his exuberance, he presently struck into the long, swinging pace of his kind, and kept it throughout without "break" or acceleration.
Over the paved streets the light buggy rattled, and the slender shafts danced around his smooth barrel, but when they touched the level high-road, horse and vehicle slipped forward through the night, a swift and noiseless phantom.Mrs.Tucker could see his graceful back dimly rising and falling before her with tireless rhythm, and could feel the intelligent pressure of his mouth until it seemed the responsive grasp of a powerful but kindly hand.The faint glow of conquest came to her cold cheek; the slight stirrings of pride moved her preoccupied heart.A soft light filled her hazel eyes.A desolate woman, bereft of husband and home, and flying through storm and night, she knew not where, she still leaned forward towards her horse."Was he Blue Grass, then, dear old boy?" she gently cooed at him in the darkness.He evidently WAS, and responded by blowing her an ostentatious equine kiss.
"And he would be good to his own forsaken Belle," she murmured caressingly, "and wouldn't let any one harm her?" But here, overcome by the lazy witchery of her voice, he shook his head so violently that Mrs.Tucker, after the fashion of her sex, had the double satisfaction of demurely restraining the passion she had evoked.
To avoid the more traveled thoroughfare, while the evening was still early, it had been arranged that she should at first take a less direct but less frequented road.This was a famous pleasure-drive from San Francisco, a graveled and sanded stretch of eight miles to the sea and an ultimate "cocktail," in a "stately pleasure-dome decreed" among the surf and rocks of the Pacific shore.It was deserted now, and left to the unobstructed sweep of the wind and rain.Mrs.Tucker would not have chosen this road.
With the instinctive jealousy of a bucolic inland race born by great rivers, she did not like the sea; and again the dim and dreary waste tended to recall the vision connected with her husband's flight, upon which she had resolutely shut her eyes.But when she had reached it the road suddenly turned, following the trend of the beach, and she was exposed to the full power of its dread fascinations.The combined roar of sea and shore was in her ears; as the direct force of the gale had compelled her to furl the protecting hood of the buggy to keep the light vehicle from oversetting or drifting to leeward, she could no longer shut out the heaving chaos on the right from which the pallid ghosts of dead and dying breakers dimly rose and sank as if in awful salutation.
At times through the darkness a white sheet appeared spread before the path and beneath the wheels of the buggy, which, when withdrawn with a reluctant hiss, seemed striving to drag the exhausted beach seaward with it.But the blind terror of her horse, who swerved at every sweep of the surge, shamed her own half-superstitious fears, and with the effort to control his alarm she regained her own self-possession, albeit with eyelashes wet not altogether with the salt spray from the sea.This was followed by a reaction, perhaps stimulated by her victory over the beaten animal, when for a time, she knew not how long, she felt only a mad sense of freedom and power; oblivious of even her sorrows, her lost home and husband, and with intense feminine consciousness she longed to be a man.
She was scarcely aware that the track turned again inland until the beat of the horse's hoofs on the firm ground and an acceleration of speed showed her she had left the beach and the mysterious sea behind her, and she remembered that she was near the end of the first stage of her journey.Half an hour later the twinkling lights of the roadside inn where she was to change horses rose out of the darkness.
Happily for her, the ostler considered the horse, who had a local reputation, of more importance than the unknown muffled figure in the shadow of the unfurled hood, and confined his attention to the animal.After a careful examination of his feet and a few comments addressed solely to the superior creation, he led him away.Mrs.
