"Turn round and go home?" stammered Barton.
The touch on his sleeve quickened a little. "Oh, yes-please, Mr. Barton!" insisted the tremulous voice.
"You-you mean I'm in your way?" stammered Barton.
Very gravely the girl nodded her head. "Oh, yes, Mr. Barton-you're terribly in my way," she acknowledged quite frankly.
"Good Heavens," thought Barton, "is there a man in this? Is it a tryst? Well, of all things!"
Jerkily he began to back his horse out of the spring-hole, back-back-back through the intricate, overgrown pathway of flapping leaves and sharp, scratchy twigs.
"I am very sorry, Miss Edgarton, to have forced my presence on you so!" he murmured ironically.
"Oh, it isn't just you!" said little Eve Edgarton quite frankly. "It's all Father's friends." Almost threateningly as she spoke she jerked up her own horse's drizzling mouth and rode right at Barton as if to force him back even faster through the great snarl of underbrush. "I hate clever people!" she asserted passionately. "I hate them-hate them-hate them! I hate all Father's clever friends! I hate-"
"But you see I'm not clever," grinned Barton in spite of himself. "Oh, not clever at all," he reiterated with some grimness as an alder branch slapped him stingingly across one eye. "Indeed-" he dodged and ducked and floundered, still backing, backing, everlastingly backing-"indeed, your father has spent quite a lot of his valuable time this afternoon assuring me-and reassuring me-that-that I'm altogether a fool!"
Unrelentingly little Eve Edgarton's horse kept right on forcing him back-back-back.
"But if you're not one of Father's clever friends-who are you?" she demanded perplexedly. "And why did you insist so on riding with me this afternoon?" she cried accusingly.
"I didn't exactly-insist," grinned Barton with a flush of guilt. The flush of guilt added to the flush of heat made him look suddenly very confused.
Across Eve Edgarton's thin little face the flash of temper faded instantly into mere sulky ennui again.
"Oh, dear-oh, dear," she droned. "You-you didn't want to marry me, did you?"
Just for one mad, panic-stricken second the whole world seemed to turn black before Barton's eyes. His heart stopped beating. His ear-drums cracked. Then suddenly, astonishingly, he found himself grinning into that honest little face, and answering comfortably:
"Why, no, Miss Edgarton, I hadn't the slightest idea in the world of wanting to marry you."
"Thank God for that!" gasped little Eve Edgarton. "So many of Father's friends do want to marry me," she confided plaintively, still driving Barton back through that horrid scratchy thicket. "I'm so rich, you see," she confided with equal simplicity, "and I know so much-there's almost always somebody in Petrozavodsk or Broken Hill or Bashukulumbwe who wants to marry me."
"In-where?" stammered Barton.
"Why-in Russia!" said little Eve Edgarton with some surprise. "And Australia! And Africa! Were you never there?"
"I've been in Jersey City," babbled Barton with a desperate attempt at facetiousness.
"I was never there!" admitted little Eve Edgarton regretfully.
Vehemently with one hand she lunged forward and tried with her tiny open palm to push Barton's horse a trifle faster back through the intricate thicket. Then once in the open again she drew herself up with an absurd air of dignity and finality and bowed him from her presence.
"Good-by, Mr. Barton," she said. "Good-by, Mr. Barton."
"But Miss Edgarton-" stammered Barton perplexedly. Whatever his own personal joy and relief might be, the surrounding country nevertheless was exceedingly wild, and the girl an extravagantly long distance from home. "But Miss Edgarton-" he began all over again.
"Good-by, Mr. Barton! And thank you for going home!" she added conscientiously.
"But what will I tell your father?" worried Barton.
"Oh-hang Father," drawled the indifferent little voice.
"But the extra horse?" argued Barton with increasing perplexity. "The gray? If you've got some date up your sleeve, don't you want me to take the gray home with me, and get him out of your way?"
With sluggish resentment little Eve Edgarton lifted her eyes to his. "What would the gray go home with you for?" she asked tersely. "Why, how silly! Why, it's my-mother's horse! That is, we call it my mother's horse," she hastened to explain. "My mother's dead, you know. She's almost always been dead, I mean. So Father always makes me buy an extra place for my mother. It's just a trick of ours, a sort of a custom. I play around alone so much you know. And we live in such wild places!"
Casually she bent over and pushed the protruding butt of her revolver a trifle farther down into her riding boot. "S'long-Mr. Barton!" she called listlessly over the other, and started on, stumblingly, clatteringly, up the abruptly steep and precipitous mountain trail-a little dust-colored gnome on a dust-colored horse, with the dutiful gray pinking cautiously along behind her.
By some odd twist of his bridle-rein the gray's chunky neck arched slightly askew, and he pranced now and then from side to side of the trail as if guided thus by an invisible hand.
With an uncanny pucker along his spine as if he found himself suddenly deserting two women instead of one, Barton went fumbling and squinting out through the dusty green shade into the expected glare of the open pasture, and discovered, to his further disconcerting, that there was no glare left.
Before his astonished eyes he saw sun-scorched mountain-top, sun-scorched granite, sun-scorched field stubble turned suddenly to shade-no cool, translucent miracle of fluctuant greens, but a horrid, plushy, purple dusk under a horrid, plushy, purple sky, with a rip of lightning along the horizon, a galloping gasp of furiously oncoming wind, an almost strangling stench of dust-scented rain.
But before he could whirl his horse about, the storm broke! Heaven fell! Hell rose! The sides of the earth caved in! Chaos unspeakable tore north, east, south, west!
Snortingly for one single instant the roan's panic-stricken nostrils went blooming up into the cloud-burst like two parched scarlet poinsettias. Then man and beast as one flesh, as one mind, went bolting back through the rain-drenched, wind-ravished thicket to find their mates.
Up, up, up, everlastingly up, the mountain trail twisted and scrambled through the unholy darkness. Now and again a slippery stone tripped the roan's fumbling feet. Now and again a swaying branch slapped Barton stingingly across his straining eyes. All around and about them tortured forest trees moaned and writhed in the gale. Through every cavernous vista gray sheets of rain went flapping madly by them. The lightning was incredible. The thunder like the snarl of a glass sky shivering into inestimable fragments.
With every gasping breath beginning to rip from his poor lungs like a knifed stitch, the roan still faltered on each new ledge to whinny desperately to his mate. Equally futilely from time to time, Barton, with his hands cupped to his mouth, holloed-holloed-holloed-into the thunderous darkness.
Then at a sharp turn in the trail, magically, in a pale, transient flicker of light, loomed little Eve Edgarton's boyish figure, drenched to the skin apparently, wind-driven, rain-battered, but with hands in her pockets, slouch hat rakishly askew, strolling as nonchalantly down that ghastly trail as a child might come strolling down a stained-glassed, Persian-carpeted stairway to meet an expected guest.
In vaguely silhouetted greeting for one fleet instant a little khaki arm lifted itself full length into the air.
Then more precipitately than any rational thing could happen, more precipitately than any rational thing could even begin to happen, could even begin to begin to happen, without shock, without noise, without pain, without terror or turmoil, or any time at all to fight or pray-a slice of living flame came scaling through the darkness-and cut Barton's consciousness clean in two!
CHAPTER II
When Barton recovered the severed parts of his consciousness again and tried to pull them together, he found that the Present was strangely missing.