The death of Ralph was the nine-days talk of the town. From the evidence of red-headed Tommie it was clear that he had directly or indirectly approved of the plan to make away with Hugh McClintock. Most Christians felt it to be a judgment of Providence that he had stepped into the trap prepared for his enemy. The pagans of the community voted it a neat piece of luck for Hugh and buried Dodson complacently and without regrets. Hugh had been summoned by business out of town the morning after the tragedy and did not return for nearly a week. He called on Vicky the evening of the same day. Both of them were ill at ease and self-conscious. Vicky felt that she ought to be mistress of the situation, but she could not get out of her mind the memory of how she had clung to this man and sobbed in his arms. The conventional parlour, with its plush album, its shell ornaments, and its enlarged photographs of Jim Budd and his wife, stifled all Hugh’s natural impulses. He had never learned how to make small talk. “Whew! It’s hot here. Let’s take a walk,” he blurted out at last. “I want to borrow a book from Mrs. Sinclair. We might walk up there,” Vicky said. As Vicky moved up Turkey Creek Avenue beside this strong and self-contained man she marvelled at herself for ever having thought him the Old Dog Tray type. The lights from the saloons and gambling houses flashed on a face that had stirred her imagination. He never posed or played to the gallery. He never boasted. He never made the heroic gesture. Yet she knew him for one among ten thousand, first among all the men she had met. He was clean and simple and direct, yet it had come about that he held in his keeping the romance of her life. He was the prince in shining armour she had dreamed about from her childhood. They walked up the street toward the suburbs of the town. As they passed the Sacramento Storage Warehouse the girl, eager to keep up a desultory conversation, nodded at the alley. “Mr. Budd told me that was where the man Dutch shot at you one night,” she said. “Yes. He waited for me as I passed. Missed three shots.” She shuddered. Even now she did not like to think of the dangers through which he had come to her in safety. “All past,” he said cheerfully. “Strange, when you come to think of it. All our enemies, Scot’s and mine, dead or driven out. Yet from first to last all we ever did was to defend ourselves.” They came to the end of the road, as he had done on that other night to which she had referred. They looked up into the stars and the clean wonder of the night took hold of them. The blatant crudeness of Piodie, its mad scramble for gold and for the pleasures of the senses, faded for this hour at least from their lives. The world had vanished and left them alone—one man and one woman. When at last he spoke it was quite simply and without any introduction to what was in his mind.