He nodded to Bartell, who supported his sister from the car, and stared politely at the pretty but anxious-looking girl who followed them. But when Ewing appeared, burdened with handbags, Ben ignored him, and rushed to shake the hand of Beulah Pierce, returning from a three-days' trip to Durango. So effusive was his greeting that Pierce mentally convicted him of having lingered at the "Happy Days" bar for one too many drinks, and broke from his affectionate grasp with some embarrassment. Ben strolled forward to the baggage car, humming lightly, and, with the bored air of a man creating diversion for himself, laid listless hands on the trunks as they were unloaded. He was whirling one of the heaviest of these to the waiting wagon when Ewing fell on him with a glad shout. Ben paused briefly, balancing the trunk on a corner, glanced up with moderate surprise, and spoke his welcome. "Oh, that you, Kid? Howdy!" He resumed his struggle with the trunk, blind to the other's outstretched hand, and when Ewing thereupon hissed at him, "You damned Mexican sheep herder!" he allowed pleasure to show but faintly in his face. But when he was seized by the collar, hurled half across the platform, and slammed brutally against the wall of the station, he protested with pleased annoyance as he picked up his hat, "Aw, quit yer foolin', now, Kid! I got to hustle them trunks." He was sufficiently refreshed by the attack, however, to sing to himself as he labored. And when the start was made he insisted that Ewing should drive. Ben sat in the rear seat. He wanted to look at Ewing's back for five hours. The sick woman, in another and easier conveyance, rejoiced that she was going still farther into the peace of her last refuge. As they left the brown-floored valley and began to climb the mountain road, she was glad that the green walls closed in behind them; glad of every difficult ascent; every stream forded; every confusing turn of the way. She was hiding herself, cunningly insuring the peace of her last hours. She was troubled now only by Virginia, who hung upon her with an agonized solicitude. But she promised herself to wear this down by her own cheerfulness and expressed certainty. Virginia would see her peaceful, hopeful, happy; she would become used to the idea of her wasting; and the actual going out would come gently to her as something fit and benign. Life so abounding as Virginia's could not long droop under the shadow of death.