Then the happy congratulations from General Lodge and his
staff; the merry dinner given the couple, and its toasts warm with
praise of the bride's beauty and the groom's luck and success;
Neale's strange, rapt happiness and Allie's soul shining through her
dark-blue eyes--this hour was to become memorable for Slingerland's
future dreams.
Slingerland's sight was not clear when, as the train pulled away, he
waved a last good-bye to his young friends. Now he had no hope, no
prayer left unanswered, except to be again in his beloved hills.
Abruptly he hurried away to the corrals where his pack-train was all
in readiness to start. He did not speak to a man. He had packed a
dozen burros--the largest and completest pack-train he had ever
driven. The abundance of carefully selected supplies, tools, and
traps should last him many years--surely all the years that he would
live.
Slingerland did not intend to return to civilization, and he never
even looked back at that blotch on the face of the bluff--that
hideous Roaring City.
He drove the burros at a good trot, his mind at once busy and
absent, happy with the pictures of that last hour, gloomy with the
undefined, unsatisfied cravings of his heart. Friendship with Neale,
affection for Allie, acquainted him with the fact that he had missed
something in life--not friendship, for he had had hunter friends,
but love, perhaps of a sweetheart, surely love of a daughter.
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