st." The
girl kissed her shut eyes, and went out, after a long, doubting look.
The sick woman raised her arms once, like a child who would be taken,
but they fell back, and she painfully laughed the old low laugh of
secrecy.

She mused on her brother's words. "A little rest." Yes, a rest. "Yet a
little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep."
She remembered now that it would come to her in the shelter of those
hills, perhaps in that room to which her thoughts had flown so many
times, where she had seen the awakening man in the sleeping boy, and
caught misty shadowings of the portent he bore for her. Her eyes might
fall before his now, but they need not fall before the eyes of his
mother.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE HILLS OF REST

Ben Crider waited for them on the station platform at Pagosa. He was
excited to a point of feverish unrest until the train warned its way out
of the last canyon. Then, by a masterful effort, he became elaborately
nonchalant. That train had brought Ewing back to him, but he constrained
himself to handle the occasion as one rising hardly to common levels. He
would have considered any other demeanor "shameless."

He nodded to Bartell, who supported his sister from the car, and stared
politely at the pretty but anxious-looking girl who followed them. But
when Ewing appeared, burdened with handbags, Ben ignored him, and rushed
to shake the hand of Beulah Pierce, returning from a three-days' trip to
Durango. So effusive was his greeting that Pierce mentally convicted him
of having lingered at the "Happy Days" bar for one too many drinks, and
broke from his affectionate grasp with some embarrassment.

Ben strolled forward to the baggage car, humming lightly, and, with the
bored air of a man creating diversion for himself, laid listless hands
on the trunks as they were unloaded. He was whirling one of the heaviest
of these to the waiting wagon when Ewing fell on him with a glad shout.
Ben paused briefly, balancing the trunk on a corner, glanced up with
moderate surprise, and spoke his welcome.

"Oh, that you, Kid? Howdy!" He resumed his struggle with the trunk,
blind to the other's outstretched hand, and when Ewing thereupon hissed
at him, "You damned Mexican sheep herder!" he allowed pleasure to show
but faintly in his face. But when he was seized by the collar, hurled
half across the platform, and slammed brutally against the wall of the
station, he protested with pl