The sun did not rise for Roy Pierce on the day which followed her
departure. His interest in Eagle River died and his good resolutions
weakened. He went on one long, wild, wilful carouse, and when McCoy
rescued him and began to exhort toward a better life, he resigned his
job and went back to the home ranch, where his brothers, Claude and
Harry, welcomed him with sarcastic comment as "the returning goat."
He tried to make his peace with them by saying, "I'm done with whisky
forever."
"Good notion," retorted Claude, who was something of a cynic; "just cut
out women _and_ drink, and you'll be happy."
Roy found it easier to give up drink than to forget Lida. To put away
thought of her was like trying to fend the sunlight from his cabin
window with his palm. He was entirely and hopelessly enslaved to the
memory of her glowing face and smiling eyes. What was there in all his
world to console him for the loss of her?
Mrs. Pierce wonderingly persisted in asking what had come over him, that
he should be so sad and silent, and Claude finally enlightened her.
"He's all bent up over a girl--the postmaster's niece--of Eagle River,
who had to quit the country to get shut of him."
The mother's heart was full of sympathy, and her desire to comfort her
stricken son led to shy references to his "trouble" which made him
savage. He went about the ranch so grimly, so spiritlessly, that Claude
despairingly remarked:
"I wish the Lord that girl _had_ got you. You're as cheerful to have
around as a poisoned hound. Why don't you go down to the Springs and sit
on her porch? That's about all you're good for now."
This was a bull's-eye shot, for Roy's desire by day and his dream by
night was to trail her to her home; but the fear of her scornful
greeting, the thought of a cutting query as to the meaning of his call,
checked him at the very threshold of departure a dozen times.
He had read of love-lorn people in the _Saturday Storyteller_, which
found its way into the homes of the ranchers, but he had always sworn or
laughed at their sufferings as a part of the play. He felt quite
differently about these cases. Love was no longer a theme for jest, an
abstraction, a far-off trouble; it had become a hunger more intolerable
than any he had ever known, a pain that made all others he had
experienced transitory and of no account.
Even Claude admitted the reality of the disease by repeating: "Well, you
_have_ got it bad. Your symptoms are about the worst ever. You're locoed
for fair. You'll be stepping high and wide if you don't watch out."
In some mysterious way the whole valley now shared in a knowledge of the
raid on the post-office, as well as in an understanding of Roy's
"throw-down" by the postmaster's niece, and the expression of this
interest in his affairs at last drove the young rancher to desperation.
He decided to leave the state. "I'm going to Nome," he said to his
brothers one day.
"Pious thought," declared Claude. "The climate may freeze this poison
out of you. Why, sure--go! You're no good on earth here."
Roy did not tell him or his mother that he intended to go by way of the
Springs, in the wish to catch one last glimpse of his loved one before
setting out for the far northland. To speak with her was beyond his
hope. No, all he expected was a chance glimpse of her in the street, the
gleam of her face in the garden. "Perhaps I may pass her gate at night,
and see her at the window."