Had she not, ten years before, trembled at the sight of this same team dashing into the road, high-headed, eyes of fire, and the reins humming with the strength of Oliver Jordan's pull?
The buckboard jolted slowly down the road and swung out of sight, but Marianne Jordan remained for long moments, staring after her father.
Every time they passed through one of these interviews--and today's talk had been longer than most--she always felt that she had been pushed a little farther away from him.

At the very time of his life when his daughter should have become a comfort to him, Oliver Jordan withdrew himself more and more from the world, and she could not but feel that his evening drives through the silences of the hill were dearer and closer to him than his daughter.

The buckboard reappeared, lurching up a farther knoll, and then rolled out of sight to be seen no more.

And Marianne felt again, what she had often felt before, seeing her father drive away in this fashion, that some day Oliver Jordan would never come back from the hills.
A moment later half a dozen of the cowpunchers came into view with the unmistakable form of Lew Hervey in the lead.

He was a big-looking man in the saddle and he showed himself to the greatest advantage by riding rigidly erect with his head thrown a little back, so that the loose brim of his sombrero was continually in play about his face.