He began to be desperately3 afraid of missing her. It was his last chance, perhaps. He would shrink from visiting the house again. There was no horse ahead as he looked toward the store. The hot, sandy yellow road was empty but for a great gasoline truck trundling up the distant rise. He galloped4 down to the creek5, through the shade and steamy dampness of the swamp, and up the slope. Negroes were chopping cotton in the fields under a broiling6 sun; they looked up lazily. A white man overseeing them on horseback waved a salutation to him. There was the usual knot of loafers on the gallery of Ferrell’s store, but Lockwood did not pull up. He rode on to the forking of the road, and looked up the way to Smith’s. The road was shady with a line of water-oaks on its south side, and was entirely7 lacking in life as far as he could see. He stood in the shadow of the trees for a few minutes, then turned back for a quarter mile in the opposite direction, not to look as though he awaited some one. He dawdled8, riding as slowly as possible, and then returned to the corner.
Still no one was visible. He was quite unreasonably9 disappointed, for Louise might not be returning for hours, perhaps not till the cool of the evening. Then, even as he stood irresolute10, he saw a feminine figure on horseback come around a turn of the road in the distance.
He rode slowly to meet her, certain who it must be. From a distance he thought Louise looked startled as she recognized him, but she smiled as she rode up. She was flushed with the heat, and sparkles of perspiration11 stood on her nose.
“I didn’t know you woods riders came away up here,” she laughed. “Is Craig scouting12 for more turpentine?”
“No—no. I had to go up to the store,” Lockwood hesitated. “I had a sort of morning off. I turned into this road for the shade. I was just going back.”
He turned his horse and they moved slowly forward side by side.
“Yes, isn’t it powerfully hot for springtime,” said Louise. “It was cooler when I started.”
“Your father said you’d gone out riding——”
“Did you see papa?” she exclaimed, looking keenly at him. “Did he tell you where I’d gone?”
“Er—not exactly,” Lockwood equivocated13. “I just called in as I passed, you know. By the way, what’s the matter with your father? He didn’t seem exactly cordial.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh, nothing, exactly. There was just a sort of effect of coolness—not his usual manner.”
“I don’t know. You should have asked him,” said Louise carelessly, almost abruptly14, and she urged her horse a little faster.
Lockwood felt rebuffed. There was something wrong, and it had been communicated to Louise. He followed a little behind her, and nothing more was said until they came to the glare of the main road. Lockwood felt desperate as what might be his last chance slipped by.
“You’re not in a hurry to go home. We might ride a little farther, where it’s cooler,” he suggested without hope.
Louise hesitated and looked at her wrist watch.
“I ought to go back before it gets any hotter.” She paused irresolutely15. “Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere. Up the trail through the pine woods. I don’t think the mosquitoes will bother us.”
Louise cast a somewhat anxious glance down the empty road toward the store, and then turned her horse into the path Lockwood indicated, in silence.
It was a rude wagon16 trail cut diagonally back through the woods toward the river, and the horses trod noiselessly on the deep-packed pine needles. There was not much coolness among the big trees, and Louise commented on the heat again. They discussed the weather conventionally, the woods, the flowers, the run of turpentine gum, with long silences. Lockwood felt tongue-tied and embarrassed and foolish, cursing the evil spell that seemed to have fallen over all his relations with the Power family. Louise was apparently17 willing to ride with him, but she seemed to make it markedly apparent that she had
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