The habit had grown on Oliver Jordan of late. When the westering sun
lost most of its heat and threw slant shadows and a yellow light over
the mountains, Oliver would have a pair of ancient greys, patient as
burros and hardly faster, hitched to a buckboard and then drive off into
the evening and perhaps, long after the dinner hour. Only foul weather
kept him in from these lonely jaunts on which he never took a companion.
To Marianne they were a never-ending source of wonder and sorrow, for
she saw her father slowly withdrawing himself from the life about him
and dwelling in a gentle, uninterrupted melancholy. She met his stare,
on this evening, with eyes clouded with tears.
Truly he had aged wonderfully in the past years.
The accident which robbed him of his physical freedom seemed, at the
same time, to destroy all spirit of youth. Whether walking or sitting he
was bowed. His eyes were dull. Beside his mouth and between his eyes
deep lines gave a sad dignity to his expression. And though, as his
cowpunchers swore, his hand was as swift to draw a gun as ever and his
eye as steady on a target, he had gradually lost interest in even his
revolvers. Indeed, what real interest remained to him in the world,
Marianne was unable to tell.
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