"
XXXI
Before dawn Hale and the doctor and the old miller had reached the
Pine, and there Hale stopped. Any farther, the old man told him,
he would go only at the risk of his life from Dave or Bub, or even
from any Falin who happened to be hanging around in the bushes,
for Hale was hated equally by both factions now.
"I'll wait up here until noon, Uncle Billy," said Hale. "Ask her,
for God's sake, to come up here and see me."
"All right. I'll axe her, but--" the old miller shook his head.
Breakfastless, except for the munching of a piece of chocolate,
Hale waited all the morning with his black horse in the bushes
some thirty yards from the Lonesome Pine. Every now and then he
would go to the tree and look down the path, and once he slipped
far down the trail and aside to a spur whence he could see the
cabin in the cove. Once his hungry eyes caught sight of a woman's
figure walking through the little garden, and for an hour after it
disappeared into the house he watched for it to come out again.
But nothing more was visible, and he turned back to the trail to
see Uncle Billy laboriously climbing up the slope.
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