Had something happened to her?
At the stable he looked and saw that Jean's saddle did not hang on its accustomed peg inside the door, and he breathed freer.

She could not have returned, then.

He turned his own horse inside without taking off the saddle, and looked around him puzzled.

Nothing seemed wrong about the place.

The sorrel mare stood placidly switching at the flies and suckling her gangling colt in the shady corner of the corral, and the chickens were pecking desultorily about their feeding-ground in expectation of the wheat that Jean or Lite would fling to them later on.